The bejeweled, wild kingdom of couture

Everything that happened at the Schiaparelli show in Paris

SATVIKA NITYA / ASST. A&C EDITOR / THE USD VISTA

At 10 a.m. on the frigid morning of Jan. 23, the haute couture house Schiaparelli took both Paris Fashion Week and the internet by storm. 

With Doja Cat covered from head to toe in crystals to controversies sparked over animal cruelty, the brand’s featured designs went above and beyond the marble walls of the Petit Palais Museum where they debuted.

Schiaparelli kicked off the first day of couture shows at the biannual Haute Couture Week in Paris with a runway show inspired by the 14th-century epic poem “Divine Comedy.” 

Schiaparelli’s creative director and designer Daniel Roseberry revealed that the brand’s latest collection was a take on Dante’s “Inferno,” a sentiment mirrored by Doja Cat’s fiery, all-red look while attending the show.

The singer was covered from head to toe in 30,000 Swarovski crystals, glitter and paint, a look that took makeup artist Pat McGrath and her team five hours to complete by hand. McGrath later took to social media to name the look “Doja’s Inferno.” 

Since the premiere of the look, viewers have been in constant conversation about Doja Cat, with some criticizing her look and others taking on a challenge to recreate it. 

USD junior Madison Calderon shared her reaction to seeing the look for the first time.

“I like fashion, but these kinds of looks just make more noise,” said Calderon. “I’m not someone who follows Fashion Weeks, and that’s the case with most audiences. So to me, I don’t see the vision or the point, and it seems more about surprising people. But that doesn’t mean it’s not exciting to watch, because you just see people wear and do ridiculous things.”

While there are some that emulate Calderon’s idea, there are others who find Doja Cat’s looks throughout Paris Fashion Week original and pleasingly extravagant. 

USD junior Amaryllis Strohl shared her thoughts on the singer’s all-red crystal look.

“I love that Doja Cat’s past is in [to] doing cosplay and more esoteric looks,” said Strohl. “It really bleeds into the way she dresses right now, because you can do bejeweled tights, a bejeweled dress and bejeweled gloves, but when the crystals are on your eyelids and in your ear canals, that’s dedication.”

Another celebrity that has become the talk of the town after the Schiaparelli show is Kylie Jenner. The youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner family drew notable attention after attending the show wearing a long black one-arm velvet gown with a massive, full-size lion’s head jutting out from one side.

The dress was part of a trilogy modeled by Naomi Campbell and Shalom Harlow that displayed hyper realistic faux animal heads to represent the vices in Dante’s “Inferno”: a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf. 

Sculpted from resin and patiently handpainted in the couture atelier, Roseberry wanted to use the fake animals as a metaphor to show his own struggle with the pressure and need to always create something new. In his show notes, he pointed out that the mimicry of realistic animal heads was intentional and was intended to leave people in wonder.

Though the designer’s intent was conveyed as artistic, some viewers were upset. Many have taken to social media to comment on how the pieces promote animal cruelty and glamorize game hunting by displaying the animals as dead items that are meant to fulfill frivolous human needs.

“I don’t think they even considered the animal cruelty aspect,” said Strohl. “I think they just ignored it and just thought it would look cool. And I’m not a big fan of pleather or other synthetic products used to make those heads because of how harmful they are to the environment, which is another thing that they didn’t really think about.”

Despite the accusations, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) surprisingly defended Schiaparelli and called their looks “fabulously innovative.” 

In a statement given to TMZ, Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA said that the looks might actually be a statement against trophy hunting because of the innovative ways to showcase the beauty of wild animals without exploiting them for “human egotism.”

Apart from sparking international conversation, Schiaparelli broke boundaries by introducing new silhouettes, merging masculine and feminine identities within their designs. 

With the introduction of wide-puffed suits, gold-painted faces and faux animal heads, the brand is attempting to break the box of high fashion.