This year’s gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates camp, which Susan Sontag characterized as reflecting excess, extravagance, artifice and irony. Designer Jeremy Scott checks all those boxes and more.
On May 6, Mr. Scott will be among hundreds of stars at the annual extravaganza in New York, inaugurating the exhibit, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” at the museum’s Costume Institute. The 43-year-old designer won’t just be seen on the red carpet: The exhibition, which runs from May 9 through Sept. 8., will include some of his clothes for Moschino, the Italian label where he has been creative director since 2013, as well as the Jeremy Scott line he began 22 years ago.
Describing his Moschino collaboration with H&M last year, Mr. Scott called his work “cartoon couture mixed with a streetwear vibe doused with hip-hop-worthy amounts of bling-bling.” The collection whipped up a frenzy in stores and briefly crashed the retailer’s U.K. website as shoppers vied for items such as a sequined bra top, a purse in the shape of a giant padlock, and dresses and tops featuring Disney characters.
Some critics’ assessments of Mr. Scott’s exuberant vision as juvenile or derivative haven’t daunted his followers, who include club kids and performers like Miley Cyrus, Rihanna and Katy Perry. Mr. Scott dressed Ms. Perry in four costumes for her Super Bowl halftime performance in 2015. The designer has expanded his audience through collaborations with Ugg (for Jeremy Scott) and Mattel’s Barbie line (for Moschino). He attracted rappers, sneakerheads and streetwear fans to his namesake line by collaborating with Adidas on shoes with wings at the ankle or Teddy bears as tongues. For Moschino, he makes iPhone cases that sell for less than $100 and are dappled in Teddy bears and bunnies.
Mr. Scott owns the Jeremy Scott label. Moschino is the fastest-growing brand of Italy’s Aeffe SpA, with sales jumping 13.6% in 2018.
Mr. Scott, who is based in Los Angeles, spoke with the Journal about camp, fashion and customers. Edited excerpts:
Critics haven’t always taken your work seriously. With some of your work in this exhibit, do you feel validated?
Fashion is fickle. Culture is fickle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have the pieces there and I’m very flattered. Am I happy about it? Totally. Am I thrilled about it? Yes. Do I think it changes my life? No. I don’t want to sound callous. I take all the compliments and the negative things and they cancel each other out.
What does camp mean to you?
I think of it as something humorous and over the top and flamboyant. I also associate the color pink with it. Like, a pink poodle to me is camp.
Do you consider your work camp?
I don’t think it’s always necessarily camp. I do use humor a lot of times in my work. Yes, I think an oversize toothpaste tube is really fun and I think I want to do it in a little clutch. I feel like a lot of my work turns up the volume on your persona. A lot of performers, especially musicians, gravitate to things that I design because they have strong personalities and they have a distinct look. It resonates with them.
Inclusion and diversity are important in fashion today. Is camp, with its embrace of misfits, a form of inclusion?
Camp celebrates over the top and that can come in every shape and form.
Is there room for humor in fashion?
I think fashion takes itself too seriously. It should be fun. It should be expressive. I look at my work a lot like the films that were done in the Depression era. People would go see a double feature, they wanted to take their mind off their troubles. That’s kind of what I think about my work today. Hopefully it can take people out of whatever their troubles are.
What about people who look at the fun, fantasy pieces and ask “Who would wear that?”
I think it’s kind of silly, those kind of thoughts. There are tons of things that are meant just as a visual. Not everything needs a function in an everyday utilitarian way.
Who’s your customer? In a 2015 documentary about you, Whoopi Goldberg said she wears your stuff.
My audience is a lot of different people. Not really an age, more a mentality. People who feel very strong and secure about who they are. They are maybe not seeking approval of others as much as thinking “this makes me happy.” It can be someone from Whoopi or older or someone totally young not even yet earning enough to buy things themselves. That’s what’s very democratic about what I do.
What are you wearing to the Met Gala?
There are a couple of things I’ve put into consideration. There’s one tuxedo I’m working on, a subversion of the classic tuxedo, harnessed by jewels that makes it look like I robbed Van Cleef & Arpels. I love the pomp and circumstance of the Met Gala, which, by the nature of it, is already camp.
Write to Ray A. Smith at Ray.Smith@wsj.com
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