Are brands pushing themselves too far or just being brave in an ever-crowded market?
Moschino has created a perfume product called ‘Fresh’ to reflect a household-cleaning appliance, but have they gone too far this time? Sadly in today’s world the style and shape of a perfume bottle determines the purchase. I’m just not sure a bottle of ‘Fresh’ sitting on a dressing table is the look girls and women want to be faced with everyday?
The new Moschino Spring/Summer 17 capsule collection focuses on prescription drugs and their take on the word ‘Capsule’ hasn’t had the best reception from the market. Moschino’s strategy seems to be all about risk? They are risk takers. The negative connotations of drug addiction and overdose over shadow this design, especially on the pharmacy label style garments. However the lesser exposed collection of “Just say MoschiNO” has a more positive message. Slogans like this take me back to my youth where people like Katharine Hamnett had political messages on t-shirts such as ‘Choose Life’. The ‘Choose Life’ slogan t-shirt was adopted by Wham in their music video Wake Me Up Before You Go Go and then Frankie Goes to Hollywood with ‘Frankie Say Relax, Don’t Do It’.
Damien Hirst and the original Pharmacy concept restaurant in Notting Hill in the late nineties was ground breaking. He successfully took an everyday product and used it as a theme for a restaurant, reinventing it again for his new Newport Street Gallery…the strength of a great idea.
The Peter Saville design for the New Order Single ‘Fine Time’ in 1988, shows a digital pill shape being abstracted to create a pattern. There’s nothing wrong with taking every day objects and creating design ideas from them.
All Moschino are doing is taking an everyday product and using it in a new way, but in my opinion this time it has gone too far using prescription drugs labels.
We do have to consider what our designs mean to people, particularly the younger generations. For me the Moschino outfit which is a prescription drug label is too literal. I like the pill shape design print clothing just not sure the label design and pill pot handbag is my style…
