What do Katy Perry, Rita Ora and A$AP Rocky have in common? They are all major fans of Jeremy Scott. Take a decadent journey with the designer and his famous friends in the forthcoming film, Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer.
By Natalie Trevis
Jeremy Scott backstage at the Moschino AW15 show
Many of fashion’s great artists have been immortalised on film (whether fictionally or otherwise) for their genre-defining work. Valentino, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent to name a few have all starred in the celluloid version of their life stories. The fact that Jeremy Scott is next in line might come as a surprise. Yet the impact his work has had on the cultural landscape is undeniable, his carefree and ironically commercial cartoon faces and McDonalds arches leap out from lurid designs in a boldly non-conformist statement. Whether for his eponymous label or for Moschino – where he has served as Creative Director since 2013 and seemingly imbues the very essence of the label’s irreverent founder Franco Moschino – Scott conveys a subversive attitude in his work that calls to mind a modern day Vivienne Westwood. Celebrities naturally have come flocking. From Rihanna to Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus to Katy Perry (who is the face of Moschino’s most recent campaign and served as Scott’s muse in a graffiti splattered ball gown at the Met Gala this year), Scott’s lavish form of expression is a match made in heaven. ‘He knows who he is first and foremost and his clothes have a narrative, his clothes have their own story,’ says Perry in the film.
Directed by Vlad Yudin and executive produced by Matt Kapp (who also produced Valentino: The Last Emperor), the film is set to enlighten Scott’s fans about his journey from rural Missouri to the dizzying heights of the design world in New York. ‘As a kid, on a farm, in a small town, looking at magazines and seeing high fashion and wanting to be a part of it so badly, I didn’t realise the runways were fake and that TV wasn’t real,’ says Scott. His path into the fashion elite wasn’t an easy one and he admits that there were many nights along the way that he slept in the Metro because there was simply nowhere else to go.
The film is released in the US on 18 September and is expertly timed to coincide with the end of New York fashion week. To watch it is to watch a new era of fashion history unfold on screen. ‘I want my clothes to live, to party, to have fun, to create a moment,’ says Scott, revealing in one sentence just why he is the people’s designer.
