Jeremy Scott, Fashion Icon and 2026 KCAI Commencement Speaker, Talks About His Life as an “Anomaly”
06.11.2026
As this year's Jedel Family Speaker, Jeremy Scott delivered the KCAI commencement address and accepted an honorary degree.
The moment marked a meaningful return to his hometown which hasn’t always felt like an easy fit, but a place he now sees with genuine affection.
With warmth, humor, and the perspective of a lifelong fashion rebel, Jeremy Scott speaks with a room of Fiber seniors at the Kansas City Art Institute. During the conversation, he described his life as “an anomaly,” saying the only explanation for his trajectory is that the universe intended for him to “happen.”
“I was born here in Kansas City, but grew up in Clinton, Missouri, partly on a farm in Lowry City,” he said. “There was no wealth or couture. No grandmother taking me to Paris to see a fashion show. I played in dirt.”
“My career was not meant to happen. At least not on paper. That’s what I’m trying to say,” he said. “So I’m an anomaly, and the universe is looking out for me, protecting me, and guiding me to wherever I need to go next.”
"I’m an anomaly, and the universe is looking out for me, protecting me, and guiding me to wherever I need to go next."
That weekend, Jeremy Scott received an honorary degree from the Kansas City Art Institute after delivering the commencement address as the Jedel Family Commencement Speaker. He returned to a city with which he has a complicated history, but one he now speaks about with affection.
With the Fiber students, he recalled spending hours at local art house cinemas, most now gone, watching old black and white Hollywood films or whatever happened to be playing. Early on, he pursued ceramics and paper sculpture, developing the first instincts of his making his own clothing. Leaning mostly into sculptural pieces because he knew little about sewing or patternmaking.
By his own description, he was a flamboyant young gay person growing up in 1988. It was not an easy life, and he faced hostility and challenges that many students today find difficult to imagine.
“I think you all are the age group that grew up with Glee. That is not my reality,” he said. “And I knew I had a light burning inside of me that was stronger than where I was from, and I needed to go somewhere where that light could shine.”
In recent years, Scott has developed a fonder relationship with the area. While installing the 2025 exhibition “A Match Made in Heaven” at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, he spent several weeks staying with his parents nearby. Of course, this follows a decades-spanning period of powerhouse output in the global fashion world.
His career has gone from being a “rebel” outsider in Paris to one of high fashion’s most commercially successful and culturally influential figures. Often compared to Andy Warhol, he is best known for blending luxury with kitschy pop-cultural iconography and streetwear.
Most notably, he served as the Creative Director for the luxury Italian house Moschino from 2013 to 2023. With total artistic control, Scott revitalized the brand with high-concept collections that mixed couture with mass-market appeal. Simultaneously, he has maintained a partnership with Adidas, where his line achieved legendary status through avant-garde footwear like the winged high-tops.
Scott has also collaborated with legacy brands such as Longchamp, where he designed exclusive bags, and Swatch, where he reimagined their "fun" aesthetic. He has had high-profile media and entertainment partnerships, including art-directing a commercial for Mattel's Barbie and redesigning the "Moonman" statuette for the MTV Video Music Awards.
In these roles he was seen as a primary bridge between corporate giants and the avant-garde.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t freak out,” he said, reflecting on the now-clear path behind him and the uncertainty of whatever may lie ahead.
“I worked constantly for 30 years. Now it’s been three years since I left Moschino. Two years before that, I stopped showing my own line because I started asking myself, ‘How much of this is my ego?’” he said.
“I was doing six shows a year. And my shows weren’t like, ‘Oh, we’ll just lengthen this skirt for next season.’ No, each one was a whole other character, a whole other world. So I started asking myself, do I really want to keep pouring my creativity into this same medium?”
When asked how he approaches challenges and exhaustion, Scott pointed to a mix of grounding practices, long-standing relationships, and a deep sense of trust in the unknown. He described looking to astrological ideas for perspective and spending time hiking as a way to reset.
“It’s very ‘granola,’ but yeah, nature and all of that,” he said. “And I am still best friends with people I went to college with. My best friend from Lawrence, Kansas, who was a painting major at Pratt [Institute], has worked with me through my entire career. He’s like my external hard drive backup to the memory of my life.”
He added that, beyond these anchors, his approach ultimately comes down to trust: “And then just fully believing that the universe has got me. That's it.”
"I honestly wouldn’t put things out that I couldn’t imagine somebody wearing whether it’s someone I know to the level of Rihanna or it’s a friend’s mom."
Self-Made Runway
As a teenager, Jeremy Scott exhausted his high school's art curriculum so quickly that administrators had to invent special class codes for him. "I had a little closet with my own keys, so I could keep projects going," he recalls.
He was even teaching a freshman class in handmade paper when a teacher pulled him aside, urging him to pursue fashion.
“I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. I’m a ceramicist.’ And she was like, ‘Look at you,’” he said. “You are always putting clothes together. You’re always styling your friends. You’re dressing your friends, you’re drawing clothes all day long.”
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, but that’s just fun.’”
Out of politeness, he started applying to schools. One day he came home to a letter, opened it, and read: “We do not accept you because you lack creativity, originality, and artistic ability.”
“I’m not shitting you,” Scott said. “Those are the exact words and why I remember it.”
During an interview at another school, he was asked about his clothing: “Who is this for? Where are the sportswear separates?"
“I was like, ‘Oh, these are for me and my friends.’ And they’re like, ‘Well, that’s not a clientele.’ And I beg to [expletive] differ!”
“Because, really, speaking your truth and for your people is how I have made my career. I honestly wouldn’t put things out that I couldn’t imagine somebody wearing whether it’s someone I know to the level of Rihanna or it’s a friend’s mom.”
His honesty, outgoing personality, and bold yet approachable nature followed him to the Pratt Institute. There, as a freshman, he acted as an unofficial intern for seniors, sewing buttons and doing whatever it took just to be involved.
“Sometimes you see something and think, ‘Oh, I hate that,’ and it helps you realize that’s not really you,” he said. “It’s very easy to think one thing is for you until you realize, ‘Actually, I’m more suited for something else.’”
Scott’s bold style even caught the eye of Marc Jacobs, who complimented him during a chance encounter on the street. Seizing the moment, Scott asked for an internship right then and there, landing an opportunity purely on the strength of his personality and drive, long before he had a degree.
“When I mentioned how people perceived my look at that time, I was the fashion show. Every single day," Scott said. "Because I didn’t have a runway to put it out there yet, my body was the canvas.”
Yet, he is wary of our current hyper-paced digital landscape, where an online platform or algorithm can update and suddenly “everything feels new starting ten minutes ago” with creators facing the constant, suffocating pressure of the question: What have you done lately?
“And that is part of the fault of our society currently, especially within the arts," Scott said. "It takes time to learn your craft. Your voice is part of who you are. And I think that in a very swipe-right world, it’s not conducive to that.”
His guiding belief has always been to follow your passion, because that is where happiness lives and where success naturally follows. For Scott, success is rooted in the pure joy of doing what he was born to do. From that authentic place, everything else flows outward with a "glow" that inevitably opens the right doors.
“I do crave the work sometimes. But I’ve decided for the time being that I can rest on my laurels a little bit—because, you know what? I am that bitch. I’m that bitch that did all this! And that should be good enough for me to feel confident.”