Schiaparelli Didn't Need Those Animal Heads

Designer Daniel Roseberry has proven his work rises above gimmicks.

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Schiaparelli showed one of its best collections under designer Daniel Roseberry in Paris on Monday, but 29 marvelous looks were overshadowed by three that had enormous, distracting animal heads.

Schiaparelli spring 2023 couture.

Foreshadowing the runway looks, which appeared on supermodels Shalom Harlow, Irina Shayk, and Naomi Campbell, was a lion’s head affixed to the pectoral area of front-row guest Kylie Jenner’s dress. The hyper-realistic head was so big it extended from hip to cheek, and looked as though she could sort of give it a big hug, rest her head on it, and fall right to sleep.

Earlier in Back Row: Why the Vibe Shift Might Finally Leave the Kardashians Behind

Though Peta deemed them “fabulously innovative,” the backlash to the heads on the runway was predictable, and dressing a polarizing celebrity like Jenner in one of them was a surefire way to kick it off. Many of the headlines about the show concerned Kylie’s head dress specifically. The New York Post’s “Page Six” went with “Kylie Jenner slammed for ‘disturbing’ lion head dress at Paris Fashion Week.” Outlets like Sky picked up former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie Johnson’s Instagram remark, “Real or fake this just promotes trophy hunting. Yuck.” The ever-diplomatic Vogue France chose, “Kylie Jenner confirms her status as a fashion icon in Paris with two standout looks” — one of them being the lion dress.

Kylie Jenner at the spring 2023 Schiaparelli couture show.

Johnson’s sentiment that the dresses glorified trophy hunting seemed widely held among the public. It’s hard to imagine that this criticism wouldn’t have occurred to the Schiaparelli team in advance of the show. On the one hand, the faux fur movement has built up so much momentum by now that they probably felt fairly safe putting these looks out there knowing that observers would instinctively know that these are not real. That said, the house didn’t take any chances, captioning an Instagram Reel of Jenner:

Embroidered Lion in hand sculpted foam, wool and silk faux fur, and hand painted to look as life-like as possible, celebrating the glory of the natural world.

Nothing is as it appears to be in Schiaparellis [sic] Inferno Couture…

NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN MAKING THIS LOOK.