Nothing says fiercer than using an apex predator as your brooch. On Monday, Kylie Jenner stole the show at Schiaparelli’s couture show in Paris when she arrived in a strapless black velvet dress adorned with a life-size lion’s head – a pre-release from the Spring-Summer 2023 couture collection of the brand that debuted later.
Naomi Campbell walks the runway at the Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2023 show. Credit: Estrop/Getty Images
Kylie Jenner attends the Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2023 show on Monday with a head-turning accessory. Credit: Jacopo Raule/Getty Images
Literally inspired by the three beasts that appear in the 14th century poem, Roseberry reimagined the leopard, lion and wolf in the collection; “representing lust, pride and avarice respectively.” Naomi Campbell modeled a boxy black faux fur coat with a wolf’s head emerging from the left shoulder, while Canadian model Shalom Harlow wore a strapless snow leopard dress with a roaring feline head bursting across the bust.
The Texan designer at the head of a historic fashion house
The head-turning pieces have been entirely handcrafted from resin foam and other synthetic materials. Yet although Schiaparelli clarifies that the pieces are “fake taxidermy”, the visual parallel to trophy hunting means some social media users find the collection difficult to appreciate.
But for Roseberry, if the clothes instill fear, they do their job. “Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso: one cannot exist without the other,” he concludes in the show’s notes. “It is a reminder that there is no heaven without hell; there is no joy without sorrow; there is no ecstasy of creation without the torture of doubt.”