(CNN) — There is nothing crueler than the use of predatory animals as ornaments. Kylie Jenner stole all eyes on the Schiaparelli Couture runway in Paris on Monday. After some time.
A hyper-realistic mock head (with a carefully crafted mane) covered Jenner’s entire torso. She completed the outfit with black Schiaparelli shoes. With gold engraved fingers.
Naomi Campbell walks the runway during Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2023. Credit: Estrop/Getty Images
Kylie Jenner attends the Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2023 show this Monday wearing a quirky accessory. Credit: Jacopo Raul/Getty Images
Moments after they took their seats, Jenner’s surreal lion companion was spotted back on the runway with the rest of the animal group. According to the show notes, the collection was inspired by Dante’s “Inferno” and the nine circles of hell, a metaphor for the doubt and creative anguish that all artists experience, the creative director wrote. Daniel Roseberry.
Taking inspiration from the three beasts featured in the 14th-century poem, Rosebery reimagined the set as the leopard, lion, and wolf, “representing lust, pride, and greed, respectively.” Naomi Campbell wore a black fur coat with a wolf head protruding from her left shoulder, while Canadian model Shalom Harlow wore a strapless leopard print sheath dress with a cat head poking from her chest.
The pieces were constructed entirely by hand with foam resin and other man-made materials. Although Schiaparelli referred to it as “faux taxidermy”, the visual parallels to trophy hunting made it difficult for some social media users to appreciate the collection.
But for Roseberry, if the dress is terrible, it does its job. “Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso: one cannot exist without the other,” he concludes in the show notes. “It is a reminder that there is no heaven without hell; no joy without sadness; no ecstasy of creation without the torture of doubt.”
