Coming off a romantic idyll for spring, Marina Moscone pulled no punches for fall. “I was feeling a little bit more city, slick, and polished,” said the designer, who drew the collection’s palette from Cecily Brown paintings, and its attitude from Helmut Newton photographs. It’s not that Moscone suddenly started designing for Amazons—there’s always an element of delicate refinement to her work—but that body confidence was built into clothes which ranged from protective to provocative.
Falling into the latter category was an off-the-shoulder wine-colored draped jersey dress that clung to the body like paint. Delivering OTT glamour was a black-tipped white faux-fur coat that had the fluffiness of marabou. More demure were Moscone’s signature caped dresses, some with lettuce edging, which was back from last season as were the sheer overdresses that materialize the idea of a digital filter.
What took this collection beyond pretty and connected it to broader cultural conversations was Moscone’s engagement with ideas of power through the perversion of codes of corporate menswear. This was best exemplified by an unmatched pinstripe set. The pants, a lightweight charcoal with an unexpected pink stripe, were cut narrow and worn with a hefty wool double-breasted blazer of olive with more widely spaced white stripes. The length was elongated, and the waist strongly defined so the fit was vaguely equestrienne. “We’re keeping the classic Neapolitan codes of tailoring and just exaggerating the silhouettes a little bit,” said Moscone of this soft armor-style tailoring that follows and imposes the lines of the body. The coat version of this jacket in black with a black dress petaling out under it was perfection.
Continuing in this vein, there were slim pantsuits with their seams on the outside almost like shards of Adam’s rib. The asymmetric fold at the neckline of dresses was like a displaced collar. A number of these easy-on slips combined lace with a pinstripe that Moscone and team had manipulated and bonded with the same kind of fervor that Patrick Bateman worked the markets. If the pieces weren’t so polished you might say this created a lived-in effect. “I have to have my hands in things,” said the designer, who said she wanted to bring “femininity into the masculine fabric” through this crushing. Putting the squeeze on is something we’re reading about daily in relation to institutions and diplomacy, and it can feel sinister. Moscone’s hands-on approach is, in contrast, concrete, and positive. A reminder that while the world might feel out of control, we can still mold the things that are within our reach. If we come out of the fray a little bit wrinkled, that’s a sign of having made it through.
