New Style Idea

At the core, spring and summer fashion are about warm weather frivolity — i.e. vacation and party wear. Jeremy Scott undoubtedly knows this, and thus provided a theme for Moschino’s own spring and summer ’23 collection that everyone can get behind: pool floats.

Ever the innovator of subverting everyday, mundane items into high fashion moments, Scott has in the past riffed on everything from fancy home decor and art work to laundry detergent, casinos and paper dolls. This time, the Moschino creative director zeroed in on the key summer pool party accessory and built the entire collection around it.

It started demurely with a series of ladylike black-and-red pieces with heart-shaped accents, mini dresses, skirt suits and black pumps adorned with hearts on the toes. Those heart-shaped accents quickly morphed into red inner tube shapes, and suddenly inner tubes appeared on the waists of the skirt suits walking down the runway at the Thursday Milan Fashion Week show.

The floats appeared as ladylike hats and yellow rain boots. Nautical stripes came with life raft handbags. Eventually, the floating rafts became actual garments, from a colorful, floral trench coat to a series of neon cropped jackets and a full raft worn as a stole across the back to complement a cartoonish evening gown. A pair of bright pink pumps were decorated with flamingoes on the toes, the ultimate pool party heel depicting the most classic pool float out there.

The finale brought a series of gowns that piled on the floaties, from swans and dolphins to flamingoes, turtles and other cartoonish anthropomorphic accents. One thing is for sure: next year’s summer pool parties won’t be the same.