Jeremy Scott serves up Jackie O inspired looks for Moschino at Milan Fashion Week 2018

The designer Jeremy Scott is renowned for his whimsy, tongue-in-cheek designs, and his autumn/winter 2018 presentation for Moschino at Milan Fashion Week was no exception.

Since his appointment to the brand in 2013, the American has delighted his devoted fans with collections inspired by Barbie dolls, construction workers, and Spongebob Squarepants - cartoon characters are a particular favourite that he comes back to time and again, though it was the models themselves that became cartoonish on this occasion.

The fashion pack headed to the outskirts of the city for the show, where a huge empty warehouse had been transformed into an incredibly long catwalk, peppered with tunnels lit by UV lights.

At first, the succession of candy coloured Jackie O-style skirts suits and shift dresses, complete with pillbox hats and Kennedy flicked bobs, felt rather tame for this often outlandish label.

But then came the frocks made out of the same fictional ‘Crazy Fruits’ sweet wrappers that our invitations had arrived in (complete with hundreds of fruit flavoured candies), followed by models who looked like they’d eaten a few too many of the contents.

It wasn’t that they were bouncing off the walls from the E numbers; rather that they’d turned the colour of their favourite flavour, much like the character Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Faces, arms and legs were painted shades of orange, pink and blue, though the A-list models walking in the show - Gigi and Bella Hadid, and Cindy Crawford’s daughter Kaia - escaped this treatment.

The skirts gave way to flared trouser suits, some striped like candy canes, before a finale of evening dresses that were fit for another Sixties icon: Joan Jetson. Two-tone frocks made from opposing fabrics like bright smooth silks and rough crystals were spliced together with the zig-zag of a lightning bolt.

The show was closed by Scott himself, who lapped up his applause by taking a full lap of that enormous catwalk.