Paris Fashion Week is here, as several celebrities stepped out in their most beautiful outfits, while designers got to show off months of hard work.
On Monday, Schiaparelli’s couture exhibition left the crowd speechless. However, before the women walked the runway, Kylie Jenner’s attire stole the show.
The TV personality was dressed in a long, strapless black velvet gown with a life-size lion head on her shoulder. Schiaparelli’s gold-toe shoes completed the ensemble.
Jenner kept her accessories simple because her lion-headed brooch spoke for itself. Her hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and she wore little gold stud earrings.
The collection’s designer, Daniel Rosenberry, claimed that the inspiration for the patterns came from “Inferno,” a 14th-century poem by Dante Alighieri. The author used three animals—the leopard, the wolf, and the lion—to represent the many flaws in life in the poem, which drew inspiration from his own life path.
As a result, Rosenberry recreated these three animals as the turbulence of uncertainty and creative pain that artists go through.
His design brought the creatures to life, and Jenner’s garment was displayed on the runway, giving her the opportunity to wear it before its formal presentation.
Naomi Campbell, the fashion entrepreneur, sported the wolf variation. She walked the runway in a boxy black fake fur coat with a wolf’s head peeking out from the shoulder.
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Finally, Canadian model Shalom Harlow donned the snow leopard tube dress with the leopard’s head screaming from the bust.
Rosenberry made it apparent that the lifelike creatures were entirely constructed of foam, but the lifelike fabrication was difficult for some to swallow.
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Many individuals on social media were also outraged by Rosenberry’s usage of animals in his works. Fans had a few things to say about the collection’s message.
When pictures and videos of Schiaparelli’s couture show showed up on social media, people were very angry, especially about the animals.
Some found it frightening, while others said the interpretation and meaning of the monsters had been lost in translation. When Jenner uploaded her attire, more people accused her of inciting animal cruelty.
Many people saw animal exploitation as cruel capitalistic exploitation. Given the history of how animal skin was utilized for clothes and contemporary campaigns to rescue animal life, several fans were disappointed with the designs.
As a result, several of the responses questioned the designer’s goal with his collection as well as his admiration for nature. According to one user, “Even if it’s a forgery, what it represents is revolting.” Imagine wearing a realistically beheaded human head as a fashion statement.
Whether the lion, leopard, and wolf heads were constructed of fake materials or not, online users questioned how a brand of this level could influence people. “Real or not, this is beyond distressing!” said another person. Cruelty is promoted in this collection. Essentially, the message is that dead animals are “Luxury” and “Fashion.”
Furthermore, the debate centered on how luxury companies have long commodified animals. “We must stop depicting animals as luxury “products.” “They may be made of foam, but these are endangered animals whose pelts have historically been murdered for use in clothes,” another user stated.
Users found the collection’s meaning to be unsettling rather than uplifting; one fan said, “So sad. Even if those are absolutely phony, the message behind it would cause a lot of uncontrollable hunts.”
The media wanted to know how Rosenberry reacted to the outcry over his couture collection because he was the designer.
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The designer stated that if art, in this case, fashion, can elicit terror, it has served its purpose because the world cannot live without both the good and the terrible.
To put his analogies into context, he recalled the poetry that inspired his work: “Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso: One cannot live without the other,” he concluded in the show notes. “It serves as a reminder that there is no such thing as heaven without hell; no joy without grief; no ecstasy of creation without the torment of uncertainty.”
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For many years, the fashion brand has been a part of the surrealist art movement, which involves portraying real-life experiences in art.
Elsa Schiaparelli founded and led the fashion house in 1927, with the idea of fur, animal skin, and supersized animals from the start. However, once Tod’s group took control in 2012, they stopped utilizing genuine fur or animal products.
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So, Schiaparelli’s early work seemed to have influenced Roseberry’s latest collection, but there were different opinions about how to appreciate the piece of art she showed.