Moschino Perfumes & Colognes

Five bottles — three women’s, two men’s — from the Milan house that spent forty years making fun of fashion while selling it.

Franco Moschino, who was in on the joke

Franco Moschino founded the label in Milan in 1983 after years illustrating for Gianni Versace. Almost immediately he began mocking the industry he worked in: jackets embroidered with Waist of Money, gowns hung with cutlery, adverts that read like protest signs. It was genuine criticism sold at designer prices, and it worked.

He died in 1994, only forty-four. Rossella Jardini kept the house going for two decades, and from 2013 Jeremy Scott pushed the same instinct into pop culture — cartoon characters, cleaning-product packaging, fast-food prints. The fragrances follow that history closely, which is why they look nothing like a normal perfume shelf.

The bear, and the rest

Toy is the line the house is now best known for, and the teddy-bear bottle is a direct lift from Franco’s own runway props. Toy Boy is the men’s Eau de Parfum — pear, pink pepper and woods, more serious than the packaging admits. Toy 2 is the women’s, and the lighter of the two.

Moschino is the 1987 original and the oldest thing here. Funny! is the cheerful citrus one. Moschino Uomo is the only Eau de Toilette on the page and the most conventional men’s fragrance the house makes.

Buying a bottle you have to look at

Be honest about the shape before you order. A teddy bear or a bear-head cap is either the reason you want it or the reason you will hide it, and that decides this purchase more than the notes do.

The women’s three sit under and the men’s two under men’s cologne. For Italian houses that play it straight, try Versace or Dolce & Gabbana.