Jeremy Scott RTW Spring 2016

Jeremy Scott, fashion’s perennial club kid class clown, has graduated to prom king. He’s resuscitated Moschino, dressed pop princess Miley Cyrus for the media maelstrom of the MTV VMAs and been the subject of a buzzy documentary, “Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer,” premiering in New York Sept. 15. He’s made skeptics laugh and smile and have fun with his clever gags; now they expect it. Have the antics become an albatross?

Scott’s own spring women’s and men’s collection was a punchy pastiche of “cool kids in the Eighties: the Lower East Side, Mud Club, CBGB madness, early John Waters films,” the designer said backstage. By his standard, the floppy mod hairdos, plastic chain-mail shifts, cartoony knit crop tops and tight skirts, and allover toy gun prints were straightforward. Funny and cute, but a little flat.

What makes Scott worth watching is his savvy appropriation of pop culture. Without it, the collection was a Sixties costume party in the Eighties.