Former Moschino Creative Director Has Eyes for the U.S.

Rossella Jardini was Franco Moschino’s right hand and muse at the Milanese house he founded. After his death in 1994 she became creative director. Twenty years later she split with the house upon the controversial hiring of Jeremy Scott. She doesn’t speak about the details of her departure but went on a two-year hiatus before bursting back on the Italian fashion scene with her eponymous label. This past February she showed her second season in the Hotel et de Milan and this week in NYC to introduce it to press at an exclusive event held in the Chelsea Arts Tower.

The collection sits at the accessible luxury price point and is 100 percent Made in Italy by Cieffe. When describing her inspiration, Rossella mentions another Italian in America, 70s designer Giorgio di Sant’Angelo. But Yves Saint Laurent also springs to mind in her bold use of color and attention to essential items such as the smoking, trench, and double-breasted jacket.

Her pieces are for the polished but playful lounge lizard. To Rossella’s eye there aren’t two patterns in the world that can’t be made to fit together; ruffles are as commonplace as buttonholes and jewelry works best when swinging recklessly from unconventional perches. Full disclosure: Rosella was my first boss when I entered the industry as a gormless St Martins design graduate in the late 90s. Furthermore she was a proponent of the eclectic aristo-hobo aesthetic for which Alessandro Michele has been receiving international applause long before he was on the scene. That is her instinctive and effortless style. “It’s me, my passions, what I wear.”

The luxury of being herself

Rossella has a rich archive of her own designer clothes that spans decades. Of her love of the Parisian luxury leather house, and in particular their men’s footwear, she jokes, “Franco used to say that I am Capricorn, with Hermès as my rising sign.” She owns a vast collection of costume and semi-precious jewelry and is never to be found without a parade of weighty baubles on both arms. She also boasts a penchant for white shirts with a popped collar, the fragrance Shalimar, and smoking. Her admiration for her best friend Franco is still never far away as she continues to carve her own legacy: “There is he who has talent and he who has vocation. I have a lot of vocation and I think Franco Moschino had talent. I have some talent too, but I shouldn't be the one to say.”

Everywoman everywhere

Her collection is intended for all ages, to be worn on all occasions, and nowhere is this more evident than viewing a random selection of recent celebrity endorsements: Grimes wore her pieces in concert, Gemma Arterton to Wimbledon, Cynthia Nixon on the red carpet.

Perhaps what’s most admirable about this veteran of Italian fashion is her courage and willingness to start from scratch after having become so inextricably linked with the Moschino brand. The humor and irreverence of that house is still very much at work, along with a nuanced glamour that has been all but flattened at her beloved Franco’s namesake maison under the wheels of Jeremy Scott’s parade float of burger bun accessories and pill bottle graphics.

Long live the lady!

She regularly uses the hashtag #Lungvitaallasignora in tweets. The phrase translates as Long live the lady, a tongue-in-cheek battle cry as she plunges, a rank neophyte, into the world of social media. She has already acquired 28,000 Instagram followers who fawn over her outfits as she strolls the cobbled Milan streets with her King Charles spaniels, Charlie and Jolie.

She says, “I got on social media so that people will remember me. What I noticed on my Instagram is that people are more interested in ME than the clothes that I make. I can get a few hundred Likes posting a photo of a piece from the collection. But if I am there, I notice that people want to enter into my life. This scares me a little bit. Now people stop me on the street. When I worked for Moschino, I had no intention of being a person that stood out. Now I go in a restaurant and ten people turn their heads and I hear that they are talking about me. But I guess I wanted the bike, and now I need to just ride it.”

The Rossella Jardini collection, which is sold in select stores in Italy, is now available on ModaOperandi.com. When I ask if she is speaking to buyers while in NYC, she says she wants to “settle the market first,” but suggests a trunk show might be in order in the near future.

We’ll be keeping an eye out for that.

By contributing guest editor Jackie Mallon, who is on the teaching faculty of several NYC fashion programmes and is the author of Silk for the Feed Dogs, a novel set in the international fashion industry.

All images from Rossella Jardini’s Facebook page