I love fashion. Whilst I could never afford many of the designer items out there, I love to see how creative fashion designers can get with their outfits and their runways. I enjoy the spectacle of it all. The glamour. The drama. I love seeing the artistic abilities of designers as well as the stylistic choices of the people who wear the clothes that they wear. I believe that fashion can be used to express who we are and who we want to be perceived as, and it tells those around us what type of person we are. I love the history behind certain fashion trends and how some trends can be used as political protest amongst society. I love how fashion styles and trends can create whole new subcultures within society and how these new subcultures add to the colourful array of characters. Whilst there are always the arguments that fashion is a high consumerist and overall wasteful industry, there are still movements being made to change how we view fashion, how we wear fashion and how we can create more sustainable styles.
Now I am sure you have seen the headlines lately surrounding the Schiaparelli Couture runway that happened during Paris fashion week. Now…I am going to approach this in two ways and of course this is all my opinion. Because fashion is subjective and as such everyone is going to have a different opinion on this runway.
From an animal welfare perspective
To start off with, these are not real animal heads. On the one head, the artistry that goes into these sculptures is nothing short of incredible. They do look insanely life like and they took an undeniable amount of talent to create. But what do they say about the animals in question?
You have a lion, a wolf and a snow leopard. Two of these animals are endangered species. All have been hunted for their fur. So what does it say for a large fashion designer to create outfits based on the fur of these animals? I have seen some commentators argue that it doesn’t glorify trophy hunting, but…what else could it possibly be trying to say?? Why use these animals at all then if the designer is not trying to make the animal head the main focal point of the entire outfit?
I also question whether this would have been such a shock if they had used everyday animals. Would people be fawning over the outfits if they had based their clothing on pigs? Cows? pigeons? Maybe even stretch a little bit and do a peacock or a llama? They clearly didn’t chose animals that had creative colour palettes (the snow leopard possibly, but the lion outfit is black, which lions are not, and the black wolf is…well…just black fur) so they clearly only picked animals that are hunted for their skin. They could have picked from a wide array of beautiful and colourful animals but they went for the ones that are critically endangered and victims of trophy hunting, and used their head sculpts as trophies for the clothing. It’s tone-deaf and horrifically ignorant of the bigger picture.
In my opinion all this does is glorify wearing animals as a statement piece. To use their fur and their bodies as a part of an outfit. As though having them as part of your outfit elevates it somehow and puts you at a higher status to everyone else around you. Which is wrong on so many levels. Even just in regards to the lion and the snow leopard, how much time and energy have conservation organisations put into showing these creatures as living things and not just a trophy? How many government resources have been put into protecting these species to ensure that the poaching that has decimated their numbers does not continue to wipe them to extinction? And now all of that could be undone by one designer who just wanted to make a statement?
Which leads me to the next point…
As a fashion statement
These sculptures were only made for the shock factor. To create a buzz around a designer and a runway and to create publicity. It has nothing to do with fashion.
Because if it was to do with fashion, why are the outfits so boring?! Once you take away the animal heads you are left with…what? A little black dress, a black fur coat and a leopard print dress? Where is the creativity in this? A runway is supposed to showcase a designers creative talent and to push the limits of what fashion can do. This doesn’t even try. Yes, maybe the quality of the clothing is very, very high. But the actual design is no different to what I can buy in Primark for ÂŁ6 and at least then Primark doesn’t glorify trophy hunting.
If you take the animal heads away you have a very plain, uninspired and uncreative fashion show. The designs are basic and commonplace. The main selling point of the whole collection are the animal heads. And while I have already said that the sculptures are insanely impressive, they are not exactly practicable. Unless you are genuinely going to a massive ball where you want to stand out, where on earth would you wear any of these outfits? I couldn’t turn up to my work meeting with a lion head on my shoulder, and I can’t exactly go on a date with a wolf head sticking out of my shoulder. Yes the heads are impressive and they show great creativity, but as part of a fashion show? It just doesn’t make sense.
Final thoughts
This was done purely for the press coverage. Unfortunately, while the head sculpting alone is wonderfully impressive, the message it sends is so outdated and tone deaf that it darkens any sort of artistic influence that the runway show could have had. Had the sculptures been sued for an actual art exhibit, or used as part of a film in place of CGI animals then maybe the response would have been different. I mean even if Schiaparelli had used this runway to genuinely raise awareness of conservation efforts around the world for the species in the runway than that would have meant a better reception with the general public. But it didn’t. It was a publicity stunt and frankly, I find it very tasteless. I barely knew who Schiaparelli were before this entire situation and now I know to avoid them. I feel this who runway will just go down in infamy.
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