If anyone had doubts that Adrian Appiolaza was in love with fashion, today’s Moschino show dispelled them; complete with a confetti finale, it was a celebration of the art, science, and magic of making clothes. At a preview, Appiolaza said the idea came from Franco Moschino’s 1992 “mannequin” dress, a piece now in the Costume Institute’s collection, that riffs on the Stockman dressmaker’s dummy, only Moschino, who was early to understand the power of visual branding, replaced the Stockman logo with his own. (For the history buffs keeping record, Moschino’s Stockman dress predates Martin Margiela’s by half a decade.)
As an homage, Appiolaza opened the show with neatly tailored pieces whose basting stitches and the needles they were connected to were still intact. Under them he layered dressmaker-dummy tunics, the logo moved up from the chest to the neckline, so there’d be no mistaking them. On the ’92 original, swaths of black chiffon were suspended from the dummy’s waist. Appiolaza adapted that idea for the floral dresses that came later, draping mismatched flower prints from the midriff, an idea that has do-try-this-at-home potential for Moschino fans.
Appiolaza is the kind of designer who would sign off on that. He’s process obsessed, as was proved out by another group of dresses, which he collaged together from pieces of found garments with his studio team—black silk mixing with polka dots and jacquards. A garbage bag gown printed with the words “C’est trash chic!” was another testament to the irrepressibility of his resourcefulness. As zany as that look was, the floral duvet and matching cushion hat kicked it up a notch, but as a counterpoint, he created a selvage logo wool and used it for elegantly asymmetrical pantsuits.
Much of the rest seemed designed to channel the “quiet joy” Appiolaza was talking about at that preview, from the smiley sweater to the tongue-in-cheek bags, including one dripping in “spaghetti” that seems poised to go as viral as the baguette and celery bags of previous seasons. Fashion has become an attention economy, so virality is necessary, but longevity is made from a different kind of essential, one with built-in usefulness and durability. Appiolaza Levi’s riffs, the iconic waistband patch supersized and stamped with the words “In Love We Trust,” are a good foundation on which to keep growing the real part of the “eccentric, but real” equation he set up at his first show a year ago.
