If there was ever any doubt that Adrian Appiolaza is head-over-heels, madly, obsessively in love with fashion, today’s Moschino show erased it in a blizzard of confetti and a full-throttle celebration of the art, science, and pure alchemy of making clothes. At the preview, Appiolaza traced his inspiration back to Franco Moschino’s 1992 Mannequin dress—now part of the Costume Institute’s collection—a cheeky riff on the Stockman dressmaker’s dummy, except Moschino, ever the branding visionary, swapped out the Stockman logo for his own. (And for those keeping meticulous fashion history spreadsheets, yes, Moschino did it half a decade before Margiela.)

As a tribute, Appiolaza kicked off the show with razor-sharp tailoring still basted together with exposed stitches, needles dangling mid-process, like the garments had just stepped off the dress form and onto the runway. Beneath them, dressmaker-dummy tunics bore the Moschino logo boldly repositioned at the neckline, so there was no missing the reference. The original ’92 version had wisps of black chiffon floating from the waist like an unfinished thought; Appiolaza reworked that into floral dresses with cascades of mismatched flower prints tumbling from the midriff—an idea so delightfully DIY-friendly it practically begs Moschino fans to get out the scissors and glue guns.

And Appiolaza would absolutely approve. He’s a designer obsessed with process—the kind who probably dreams in paper patterns and dressmaker’s chalk. That love of construction played out in a series of collaged dresses, Frankensteined together from studio scraps—polka dots crashing into jacquards, black silk thrown into the mix for good measure. Then there was the full-on garbage bag gown stamped with “C’est trash chic!”—a masterpiece of irony—but even that was topped by the floral duvet dress, complete with a matching cushion hat, taking the concept of “rolling out of bed and straight into a fashion show” to its most literal extreme. As a counterbalance, there were the logo selvage wool suits—elegantly asymmetrical and impossibly chic, proving that beneath all the theatricality, Appiolaza is still a technician at heart.

But the real undercurrent of the collection wasn’t just Moschino’s signature irreverence—it was the “quiet joy” Appiolaza had been musing about earlier, the kind of delight that comes from little things: a sweater that grins back at you, a handbag dripping with faux spaghetti (poised to join the viral ranks of last season’s baguette and celery bags), or, for those who care less about fleeting moments and more about building something lasting, his Levi’s collaborations. Here, the iconic waistband patch was blown up to billboard proportions and stamped with “In Love We Trust”—a fitting motto for a designer who, a year into his tenure, is steadily cementing his vision of “eccentric but real” dressing.