Designer Jeremy Scott’s S/S14 collection, Teenagers from Mars, incorporates a collaboration with pop artist Kenny Scharf, the often undersung contemporary of Haring and Basquiat, and stalwart of the 1980s New Wave, New York City, downtown club scene. His wild, surreal, space-race, cartoon imagery covers Scott’s collection in a blaze of hallucinatory alien graphics and super bright colours
Jeremy Scott is from Kansas and studied fashion in Brooklyn. Alongside his own eponymous label he is creative director of Moschino. Scott’s debut collection for the Milan-based label featured “golden arches” fast food logos. It enraged numerous fashion critics, but the accessories sold like hot cakes. Kenny Scharf is from Hollywood and rose to fame via his work with the likes of the B-52s, and the nightclub interiors he created in New York in the 1980s. Here, they explain how they came to collaborate on Teenagers from Mars.
Jeremy Scott on Kenny Scharf: “I’m a huge fan of Kenny’s artwork and have been speaking with him for several years about doing something together. I was thrilled to finally make it come together with this collection. His work is a mix of everything I love in pop art and pop culture. Not only was I inspired by Kenny’s art, but also his life story. My S/S14 collection was a love letter to him and the East Village early 80s art scene that he was a part of.”
Kenny Scharf on Jeremy Scott: “I’ve always been a proponent of blurring any boundaries where art resides, be it a T-shirt, a sculpture, a mural, or an oil painting. The intent and quality are number one. I don’t want to differentiate. I’ve always been excited about reaching more people than less people. Putting art on clothes or a wall gives me a wonderful opportunity to do that. To me, Judy Jetson is the Jeremy Scott woman. Jeremy and I have both been longtime fans of Judy. I was really excited to see he did some designs based on her. It was then that I knew we had something in common. I’ve put her in my work for decades.” C
