I suggest that Appiolaza seems impressively calm despite driving this first-ever collection under his own name — at least since the Central Saint Martins graduation show of 2002 — by the seat of his pants. He laughs and replies: “Every morning, I open my eyes and immediately start thinking about how to navigate this first show. I know that afterwards, I will have the time and resources I need to do my best fully. But for now, I had to use the ingredients that were here, there was no time to develop new ones. So, it has been about juggling what was here to be able to begin to create these characters and start the story that I want to tell at Moschino. The idea of obsession with archetype garments or ideas of fashion is part of the message I want to send across. Let’s see if we can do it.”
Appiolaza, 51, has been preparing for this moment throughout his more-than-two-decade career in fashion design. In chronological order, the designers he’s worked under and learnt from are; Alexander McQueen and Miguel Adrover (at their own houses), Phoebe Philo (Chloé), Miuccia Prada (Miu Miu), Marc Jacobs (Louis Vuitton), Clare Waight Keller (Chloé again), and most recently Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, where he was the design director of ready-to-wear. “I learnt something important from each of them along the way,” he says. “What’s very new for me here, and very creatively liberating, is knowing that I make the final decision. When you’re working under someone, the job is to propose and create things that you anticipate the creative director will want: this factor is always at the front of your mind. If the relationship and understanding is good, then that should become second nature after a period of trial and error.”
Possessing that final say — and claiming ultimate responsibility for the creative gesture — can be a weighty burden when newly assumed. But Appiolaza says that here at Moschino, he does feel, at least in spirit, still in the service of another intellect. “And that’s to Franco [Moschino] himself,” he says. “Something that makes me quite emotional being here is that there are many people in the company who worked with him. I want to hear all their stories. In the studio, I’ve been sitting and working at the same table that Franco worked from. You know, my character is that I’m quite a behind-the-scenes person, and I don’t want to change that — this is something that I discussed. My aim is to make the main character in my work here that of Moschino itself.”
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