Adrian Appiolaza is settling in at Moschino. His latest rite of passage is this pre-collection lookbook, a project for which he enlisted photographer Chris Rhodes and a villa on the outskirts of Milan. As for muses, Appiolaza looked to British aristocrats, chalking up his interest to his split English and Argentinian background, as well as a recent watching of The Crown.
In the spirit of Franco Moschino, Appiolaza approached the subject with a welcome bit of irreverence. His aristos ride bicycles in the foyer, play dress-up with antique carpets, and wear the family china as jewelry. Rounding the corner on a year at the Italian brand, his point of view is sharpening into focus. His Moschino is less campy and more rooted in the everyday than it was in its former iterations, but not without elements of whimsy. “Franco had that sense of irony and humor, so it’s important that I keep that vein through the collection,” he said.
He did so with a number of techniques: stamping an English hunting jacket trompe l’oeil-style onto a t-shirt, collaging other jackets into a sleeveless dress, cutting lingerie slips and camp shirts in a tea-and-crumpets print, and tweaking the classic Argyle sweater motif with Moschino smiley faces and hearts. Hailing from Loewe, Appiolaza has a good handle on brand building. The heart, which he’s turned into a sort of de facto symbol, appears as knee patches on terrific-looking denim jeans.
He collaborated with Sanderson—holders of the Royal Warrant, in case you didn’t know—for the floral prints that turned up on dresses and tailoring. Other motifs, like a cloud print and a naive landscape print, were pulled from Franco’s archive and have been seen in different guises on his Moschino runways. Appiolaza’s own playful personality comes across clear as day on a cloud print bag upon which the words “help me” are scrawled. What’s that all about? “It was an ironic way to say ‘help me’ become the next It bag,” he laughed.