Jeremy Scott Puts SpongeBob on Moschino

“SpuniaBob QuadratoPantalone, duh” is, I imagine, how one Italian pre-teen explained what that yellow thing covering sweaters and bags and jackets at Jeremy Scott’s first Moschino show was to her front-row editor of a mother in exasperation (“She knows nothing!”), via text.

SpongeBob SquarePants.

Jeremy Scott has worked with the cartoon motif before. In 2012 he sent Bart Simpson down his own runway, but why would a designer, now at the helm of an iconic Italian brand, choose to announce his Fall Winter arrival with an American talking sponge who — need I remind you — lives in a pineapple under the sea?

Considering that this is Jeremy Scott, we shouldn’t be so surprised. And this is probably exactly what the house of Moschino wanted. With its kitschy and untrammeled sense of humor, the brand has never been shied away from irreverence. So amid the predictable biker daddy looks in both leather and denim and the gold accents on ladies-who-lunch-suiting, SpongeBob, Budweiser and an army of junk food prints make perfect sense.

And the silhouettes are still great. If the fabrics were replaced with traditional prints (and that ketchup red/mustard yellow combo were swapped with, say, black and white) we’d probably be talking about the well-executed shapes instead. Isn’t look 40 — the Fruit Loop Dress — sort of Lanvin? (Mr. Elbaz, please don’t hurt me). And look 47 — the Hot Cheeto-printed gown — what is it if not a de la Renta-worthy shape?

It’s just that this collection makes a much larger statement about the evolution of fashion week than we might be giving credit for. To use a runway show as a giant marketing spectacle as opposed to a place to showcase new clothes is no longer a novel concept anymore in the era of Instagram and I-have-a-keyboard-and-therefore-an-opinion but must it be this noisy? This obvious? What was Scott’s intention if not to go viral?

We’re turning the mic to you. Break this down to Chinatown and back, because there are no wrong answers, only Happy Meals.

-Amelia Diamond and Leandra Medine

Images via Vogue, The Cut & Now Fashion