From teddy-bear collections to biker jackets, leather bags, logo T-shirts, and hoodies that often feature unique and controversial slogans with loud designs, Italian luxury brand Moschino has long been known as the anti-fashion label.
Founded by the late Franco Moschino in 1983, Milan, encouraged by none other than Gianni Versace, began his eponymous label with a line of casualwear and jeans before eventually expanding into eveningwear, shoes, luxury accessories, and, of course, their legendary perfumes.
Not afraid to poke fun at the fashion industry, or come up with controversial statements, Moschino once said, “My approach is a contradiction, I know, but why not? Why should I have to embrace the fashion business just because I work in it? Why should I?” as quoted from British Vogue.
In 1994, after Moschino’s sudden passing at the early age of 44, which shocked the fashion world, the brand continued with his former assistant, Rossella Jardini, taking over the house. She remained at the helm until 2013 and then appointed the creatively unique American designer Jeremy Scott who took over as creative director.
During his decade-long reign, Scott found immense success by reinterpreting Moschino’s tongue-in-cheek fashion mockery with kitschy pop culture and pushed it onto a much bigger scale. From his legendary collaborations with Coca-Cola, Mattel Barbie to even SpongeBob and McDonald’s, Moschino under Scott embraced a maximalist approach to fashion and pop culture.
The house also expanded beyond fashion under Jeremy Scott, venturing into furniture design (remember when you could buy Moschino’s limited-edition furniture capsule collection?) and pioneering the “see now, buy now” retail model.
And of course, being a celebrity-favourite brand also comes with certain advantages. From Katy Perry’s memorable brand ambassador campaigns to designing vivacious tour outfits for pop stars like Kylie Minogue, Madonna, and Lady Gaga, Moschino has consistently come up with internet-favourite designs that combine a playful, campy, and often satirical approach to high fashion.
With its long history of playful and campy designs, Moschino is still known as the go-to brand for those who want a side of fun with their fashion. Here’s the complete MAYFEYR breakdown.
Moschino: House of Fashion Satire & Social Commentary
Just like other luxury fashion houses, Moschino (pronounced moh-SKEE-no) was born out of the itch to say something different.
Italian designer Franco Moschino wanted a platform to question and subvert the exclusive nature of the high-fashion industry. Instead, he wanted to offer an intelligent, humorous, and alternative approach, proving that clothing could also be playful. The designer was also known for critiquing consumerism, industry snobbery, and fashion hierarchies through irony, pop art, and surrealism.
Born into a family that worked in the iron industry, Moschino was expected by his father to continue the family business, but Franco had another idea. He went on to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan and, after graduating, worked as a fashion illustrator and sketcher for Gianni Versace from 1971 to 1977. He later worked for the Italian fashion house Cadette before establishing his company, Moonshadow S.r.l., and launched his own fashion label.
The first Moschino collection in 1983 immediately captured Franco’s unconventional approach to fashion, where he sent supermodel Pat Cleaveland down the runway in a silk dress, sneakers, and grocery bag in hand and as the result the collection got picked up by U.S. retailers for spring 1984, as reported by WWD.
By the ’80s, Moschino had risen to fame and also expanded beyond its main line. In 1986, they launched the Moschino Jeans line, followed by the successful Cheap and Chic secondary fragrance line in 1989. Moschino’s slogan-covered designs, including “Stop the Fashion System!” and “This Is an Advertisement!”, also became popular for defying traditional fashion norms.
Long before social commentary became mainstream as it’s now, Moschino used advertisements in high-fashion magazines to highlight important issues, including “No to Racism,” environmental messages like: “Enough! The sea is not your toilet,” and produced campaigns that helped raise awareness of the AIDS crisis.
Moschino’s runway designs also boasted tongue-in-cheek irony, surrealist details, and satirical jabs, with phrases like “Waist of Money” embroidered on jackets. He even featured everyday objects in his designs, such as plastic fried eggs sewn onto miniskirts and quilted jackets decorated with bottle caps.
While his over-the-top approach was controversial, it was also highly profitable. By the late ’80s and early ’90s, Moschino had already become a popular name in Europe and eventually expanded into the United States. He was even named the second-highest-earning fashion designer in Italy, with earnings of US$3.95 million that year alone, as reported by WWD.
After Franco Moschino’s sudden demise, the brand continued to earn unapologetically well from its fragrances, jeans, and menswear lines under the helm of Rossella Jardini. By 1999, sales had reached more than US$300 million, the same year Aeffe S.p.A. acquired a majority stake in Moschino.
Jeremy Scott’s Era, Brand Collaborations & Celebrity Followings
From 1994 to 2013, Rossella Jardini was in charge of Moschino and she managed to include the ironic DNA and social commentary through fun, clever and eye-catching runway collections. But after her tenure came to an end, Aeffe chairman Massimo Ferretti appointed Jeremy Scott as her successor.
And as everyone will know, Jeremy Scott is one of those designers who thinks more is more. And with his vision, he successfully transformed Moschino into a viral, kitschy, and pop-culture juggernaut fashion house delivering many memorable runway collections, partnerships, and meme-worthy looks.
From his Barbie-theme runway for Spring/Summer 2015 to his kitschy brand-reference collections, including McDonald’s and Hershey’s Chocolate-inspired dresses in his wardrobes, he was also responsible for popularizing the teddy bear and plushies trends on handbags, which we think Labubu can thank him for.
However, Jeremy Scott’s Moschino collections were also clever and incorporated out-of-the-box ideas. For Moschino’s Autumn/Winter 2017 collection, Scott focused on recyclable materials and used them, like trash bags, in high-fashion mini dresses and gowns. He even designed a dustbin-lid fascinator, which, suffice to say, attracted plenty of attention.
There were also the chandelier gowns, the Marie Antoinette-inspired cake dress from the Fall 2020 collection, and, when the pandemic hit, Scott decided to work with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and created 30-inch marionettes dressed in his new designs sans models. Because who said that creativity has limits?
While his cheeky brands’ logo designs were a hit, Scott was also a genius in partnerships. From collaborating with H&M to even including classic cartoons, like Looney Tunes and SpongeBob SquarePants in his collections, Scott knows that to stay relevant brands need to infuse current pop culture into their designs. And who can forget when Moschino collaborated with The Sims back in 2019 and featured eight pieces from the brand’s real-world capsule collection? A major social buzz.
Speaking of social media, Jeremy Scott was perhaps one of the few designers who understood how to utilize it to his advantage. “I think I was built for social media,” the designer told Vogue in 2018. “It’s about a picture that is less than the size of the palm of your hand. What is impactful is not an all-black look. It’s about being colourful and bold and my work was already that and has always been that way. It’s kind of like that world has caught up to me.”
And not only that, Moschino’s accessories and uniquely bizarre objects have also catapulted the brand into a league of their own. Remember the window-cleaner perfume, the celery-shaped clutch, the candelabra, the bike wheel, or even the toilet-paper and tissue-box bags? These quirky designs are some of the best examples of how Moschino's playful approach to fashion paid off.
With its strong campy and avant-garde designs, Moschino also gained a strong celebrity following. From putting Katy Perry in chandelier and hamburger dresses at the 2019 Met Gala to designing world-tour costumes for names like Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Kylie Minogue, Moschino under Jeremy Scott enjoyed massive spotlight.
After he stepped down in 2023, Moschino had seen several successors: Davide Renne, Adriana Appiolaza, followed by the duo Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina, whose recent debut enjoyed a raving review where Vogue praised the collection as “cool, unexpected and very original.”
Always known as the expressive side of fashion, it’s safe to say that Moschino has paved a certain legacy of its own. Or as Jeremy Scott once said: “I don’t speak Italian, but I do speak Moschino.”
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