Savage; The Bear Man bottled.
By Ornella Biagetti
Seen as a true dreamer, a perfect example of Generation X, American designer Jeremy Scott came a long way from his hometown Kansas City to the heady heights of luxury fashion.
He’s been called many things including ‘the last rebel’, truth is, he just followed his powerful stream of energy and never stopped.
Fresh from New York where he studied Fashion Design at Pratt Institute, Jeremy Scott moved to Paris in 1996 to unleash his talent. He was promoting fashion house parties at nightclubs while interning at Moschino, thanks to the precious contact with Michelle Stein, now president of Aeffe Group.
The story goes, having not much luck in terms of finding a job in the industry, he decided to launch his own brand. His debut fashion show happened in the Bastille, in 1997. On a car crash themed stage he presented a collection of creations made mostly from paper hospital gowns and scrap fabric, that gave him the first taste of fame and then went on to be shown in the windows of the Paris high fashion retailer Colette.
He then went on to collaborate with Adidas and in 2002, saw the launch of two Jeremy Scott collections of footwear called JS Wings and JS Bears (furry sneakers with teddy bear heads) and JS Wings – winged high-top sneakers, became the inspiration for his very first perfume, turning the shoe into a glass-bottled fragrance, packed in the characteristic Adidas shoebox. This was a real show of the humour behind the man.
Then another brand running at the same time was Moschino. More than a fashion house, Moschino was seen at the time as a vibrant entity, a name that people know for its freedom and creativity. It was also known for its humour.
The house founded in Milan in 1983 by Franco Moschino was inherited by Rossella Jardini, his former assistant, after his death in 1994. It became known for its tongue in cheek humour and (sometimes wild) artistic expression.
Abundant in colours and openly critiquing the industry they were thriving in, the brand was fun, colourful and slightly dangerous but very loved. He cheekily called his women’s secondary line Cheap and Chic, a collection specifically created to fulfill the need for the youthful diffusion in the fashion market.
Franco Moschino launched his brand with innovation in mind. Like Jeremy Scott, Mr. Moschino came from humble origins, far from the pencils or scissors or the tools of the trade, yet alongside his dream to be a fashion designer from a tender age. He studied Fashion Design, as well as having a flair for fine arts.
Going on onto great success, he was capable of grandiose events and shows. For example, the Cheap and Chic Store opening, where he personally arranged the set of the store as a sort of ‘fake art gallery’, made up of canvases he painted himself.
Moschino put on the catwalk iconic, at times stereotyped styles, tailored in the traditional way, but with added ironic slogans inventing a new fashion figure in traditional Milan: the modern eccentric. Thick cotton, cashmere, woven fabric, added with original details, sometimes unusual materials, just enough to transform a basic garment in an unmistakable signature collection piece. The fashion house covered different products right from the beginning.
Not only couture, high innovative clothing, including sportswear, casual and lingerie, but also jewellery, cosmetics and of course, fragrance, which was another strong point of Moschino brand.
‘Moschino’ was the name of the famous first eau de toilette, created for women by the brand in 1987 and is still in production. Three years later they released ‘Moschino pour Homme’. This started the brand’s journey in perfume.
From the ‘Cheap and Chic’ fragrance line to the explosive looking ‘Fresh Couture’, designed to resemble a bottle of cleaning spray, Moschino perfumes were launched with the dame humour and passion as the clothing lines.
The Moschino brand carried on its journey until 2013 when the mad genius that is Jeremy Scott came to the helm of the brand as creative director, given the previous experiences with his company and the common philosophy of humour and poking fun at the fashion industry the appointment of Scott was a perfect fit.
In 2014 the secondary line of the Moschino brand Cheap and Chic was renamed into Boutique Moschino and from that, the fragrance ‘Moschino Toy’ was created.
A teddy bear (recalling the Adidas JS Bears line) where the Eau De Toilette bottle was inside an actual plush doll wearing a tiny t-shirt reciting “This is not a Moschino Toy”. This was the first-ever Moschino unisex fragrance.
Scott added many other scents to the Moschino perfume list, like ‘Moschino Forever Sailing’ and another scent for Cheap and Chic series (the diffusion line in perfumery is still called this), of which he used the well-known shape of cartoon character Olive Oyl, calling it ‘So real’, to make a word game with the ‘surreal’ style homage to Salvador Dali who inspired the design of the bottle.
In 2018 the journey carried forward with mainline Moschino ‘Toy 2’, packed in an elegant frosted glass bottle in the shape of a teddy bear, carrying fruity-floral Eau de Parfum for women.
In May 2019 Jeremy Scott completed the male version of glass bears with ‘Toy Boy’, Eau de Parfum for men, making this a mirror product to ‘Toy 2’.
The feminine perfume Toy 2 is housed in an angelic white matt, clear and sand-blasted glass bottle. It is a crisp fresh fragrance of apple and mandarin orange as an opening, the middle notes of sweet peony and jasmine, with a base to hold the fragrance of woody smells of sandalwood, amber, and musk.
The men’s fragrance comes in a devilish dark bottle that is a black smooth, shiny finished glass flask. The gents Eau de Parfum differs by having notes of berries, green pear, rose and magnolia, embracing the inspiration femininity within the make psyche and finishes with a flourish of amber and vetiver with hints of nutmeg and clove buds.
In the men’s scent, the ingredients are equally mixed to create a balance between the sweetness of the playful teddy bear and the charisma at the heart of the man. Very much as seen in the all-black leather outfit of the motorbiker photographed in the print advertising campaign.
