From Donald Duck at Gucci to Power Rangers at Bobby Abley – the cartoon collaborations you need to know.

Fans of children’s cartoons and high fashion, who are so rarely granted the opportunity to indulge their twin passions simultaneously, will have found much to savour in Gucci’s latest SS collection. Hidden among the usual array of exotic flora and fauna that we’ve come to expect of the brand, there was a cameo appearance from none other than Disney’s Donald Duck.

Here he is on a bright red sweater. Here he is giving a big thumbs-up on a colourful knitted beanie hat. Here is his famously feathered face adorning the back of a white leather varsity jacket, with the name of the Greco-Egyptian deity “Serapis” written in Greek underneath. You can even purchase a pair of Donald Duck-embellished leather boots, should the mood take you.

Incorporating Donald Duck in a travel-themed collection makes a certain amount of sense. He wears a sailor’s outfit – on the top half, anyway – and travel is a recurring theme in his stories, especially in Italy, where he is known for accompanying his wealthy, wanderlust-consumed uncle, Scrooge McDuck, on a series of globe-trotting adventures.

But while this might help to explain the presence of the US’s favourite cartoon duck in a major menswear collection, it doesn’t really account for the wider trend of cartoons in fashion. What wider trend, you ask? Allow us to explain.

So, Donald Duck isn’t the only recent example of a cartoon in fashion?

It isn’t even the only recent example from Gucci. Last season, the Italian megabrand featured the cast of Mr Charles M Schulz’s Peanuts. Who can forget its famous red sweater with Snoopy emblazoned on the front and tiger stripes on the back? You, apparently.

OK, what else?

Where to start? Givenchy rode this wave in AW13 with its hugely popular line of Bambi-print sweaters and tees. Before that, there was Mr Jeremy Scott, king of the lowbrow pop-cultural reference, who used Bart Simpson’s face as a print in his AW12 collection. He repeated the trick at Moschino in 2014, this time using the face of SpongeBob SquarePants. In one of our all-time favourite collaborations, California skate brand Stüssy linked up with Beavis and Butt-Head in 2011. And there are plenty of smaller brands who use cartoon characters as a regular source of inspiration. Iceberg featured Donald Duck on its clothes long before Gucci ever did, while up-and-coming menswear designer Mr Bobby Abley, whose current SS17 collection is partly inspired by the Power Rangers, has used abstracted cartoon motifs on several occasions in the past. His previous collections have been a Disney bonanza, featuring the faces of Mickey Mouse, Bagheera and Baloo from The Jungle Book and Ursula from The Little Mermaid, to name but a few.

Some of that sounds… how can I put this? A bit kitsch.

Well, if none of that’s to your taste, there are plenty of subtler nods to cartoon history. The founders of French brand Arpenteur (new to MR PORTER this season) were so enamoured of the Franco-Belgian ligne claire comic book style exemplified by Hergé’s Tintin that they commissioned French illustrator Régric to design labels (among other things) for their clothing.

And the big question: what’s it all about?

If you ask us, it’s all about nostalgia. While a designer might have a good reason for including a specific cartoon in his or her collection – see Donald Duck at Gucci, for instance – it’s hard to look at the general trend for retro cartoons in fashion and not see it as an expression of the same yearning for the past that’s currently feeding our infatuation for 1990s sportswear brands.

So, what you’re telling me is that Gucci and Donald Duck is the same as Vetements and the Reebok InstaPump Fury, or Gosha Rubchinskiy x Fila?

In the sense that they are all about trying to recapture the innocence of youth, yes. What you’ve got to remember is that nostalgia is an incredibly potent force in the fashion industry. Designers and creative directors, who tend to reach positions of influence in their late thirties and early forties, are naturally drawn back to the era when their own tastes were formed, in their late teens and early twenties. This explains why it takes roughly two decades for an era to become cool again. Think of how the designers of the 1990s were obsessed with the 1970s: boot-cut jeans are a direct descendant of flares, after all. The same is true of today’s designers and the 1990s.

I suppose that when it comes to reminiscing about youth, cartoons are something we can all relate to.

You’ve hit the nail on the head.

So, to recap: designer brands are exploiting the beloved cartoons of my childhood to trigger feelings of nostalgia, in the hope that I’ll be tempted to part with my hard-earned cash?

Something along those lines, yes. But let’s try not to be too cynical about it.

Finally, can I expect any other designer brands to embrace this trend in the near future?

We could only speculate. But here are three of our most wanted, in any case.

Rick Owens x Masters of the Universe

The gothic undertones, the draped fabrics … Mr Owens and Mr… Skeletor are made for each other.

Stella McCartney x Captain Planet

Stella McCartney has never used leather or fur, and last year filed its first “environmental profit and loss” accounts. If there’s one brand taking pollution down to zero, this is it.

Saint Laurent x Pepé Le Pew

The quintessential French fashion brand meets the quintessential – or should that be stereotypical – French cartoon character. Think lots of black and white. Elegant, skinny, smelly.

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