In the immediate aftermath of Jeremy Scott’s fall/winter presentation at New York Fashion Week, youngins from the twitterverse were all up in arms, asking the Lamour Supremes and Buff Monsters how they felt about being ripped off. The real storm hadn’t hit yet, as it took a few more days before Jim Phillips saw these images, and had a little shock of his own (as illustrated above).

Of course, it’s no news that Jeremy Scott is much more of a pop-art designer than a real creative mind (especially for us at Mishka), but there is a certain laziness about this collection that beats anything he’s ever done to the punch. Jim Phillips isn’t just a board designer, he is arguably THE guy who has designed pretty much every recognizable skate and surf design, from the screaming hand to his slasher; and if there is such a thing as skateboard-inspired fashion (not to mention streetwear), it’s at least in because of him – he was the art director for Santa Cruz Skateboards and opened up the way for VCJ and some funny guy named Pushead to start a friendly war of who can rock the raddest designs and plaster them on as much gear as humanly possible.

Taking his art wholesale and sticking it on skate and surf-inspired clothes is a pretty good slap in the face of not only an artist who is still alive and kicking, but also an entire generation of people who grew up with this culture and already look down on young skaters as pencil-necked trendies. On consolation at the end of the day though: who wears Jeremy Scott? I mean, who pays to wear his shit, besides uninspired k-pop and j-pop marketing firms? Half of his clothes never even make it to production, and the commercial loss for Phillips will be pretty minimal. Plus Scott was already a novelty designer so his notoriety won’t take a big hit (and I’m sure he’s still going to defend his collection somehow), if you didn’t care about history before, you probably won’t start today. That is the divide we live in. Maybe the CFDA should man up for once and ban him from showing for a couple of years, so he can take an inspirational retreat. Actually, maybe they could enforce a mandatory retreat for all designers, every 3 or 5 years. We would all win.

- Gnou