hot right meow
From Gucci’s kitty sweaters to MSGM’S feline prints and Stella Mccartney’s entire pre-fall collection, never has the catwalk been so rife with, well, cats. Sophie Beresiner heralds the rise of the Fashion Cat Lady aka the four-legged trend taking over you
The cat lady gets a fashionable upgrade.
Cat hair is lonely-people glitter,” is a slogan I once saw on a T-shirt. Funny, right? We all know the crazy cat lady stereotype to which it’s referring. But hang on. I have animal hairs on my clothes, but what they’re clinging to is more likely to be a Bella Freud intarsia jumper than an “I heart kitties” knit. Far from being a strange cat obsessive, I’m actually a member of the fashion world’s newest club – and once you’re in, it’s anything but lonely.
An unofficial stealth movement is infiltrating our Instagram feeds and, ultimately, our subconscious, and as a result, the cat lady prefix is going from “crazy” to “cool”. Members of the gang include Taylor Swift, who is known for her love of her two cats, Olivia and Meredith, and posthumously Kurt Cobain, whose picture I have saved in my favourites album: black and white, with his kitten, taken by Courtney Love. What could be cooler?
It began with Choupette Lagerfeld (cat of Karl), a four-year-old longhaired Siamese who started out as an Instagram celebrity (@choupettesdiary) and is now, along with Truman, the black and white kitten from the Miu Miu campaigns, a bona-fide fashion muse, appearing across entire highfashion collections. The fact Chanel has its own feline mascot couldn’t help but be an, ahem, catalyst in the rise and rise of the Fashion Cat Lady.
Thrillingly, Choupette follows me on Twitter. And, since I follow back, I’m one of the first to know that, despite speculation, Choupette and Cara Delevingne’s dog are not romantically linked. My Cool Cat Lady credentials go further than that. I also have a subscription to Puss Puss magazine, a stylish glossy publication dedicated to all things feline (a recent issue featured Pam Hogg and her Sphynx cats, and an interview with the iconic Garfield). It’s a magazine about interesting people who also happen to share a passion for cats. Launched in 2014, it has since featured artist and activist Ai Weiwei, shoe designer Charlotte Olympia and It-girl Chloë Sevigny among many others, as well as shoots by the best up-and-coming and established photographers. It’s sold in the world’s coolest stores, such as Colette in Paris, Soho House Berlin and Daikanyama Tsutaya in Tokyo, and some 100 outlets throughout the US.
Editor Maria Joudina-robinson says, “I love magazines and I love cats, so I decided to put the two together and create a beautiful publication that people will want to keep and collect. Cats are naturally elegant and stylish – there had to be a magazine mixing them with fashion, art, culture, music and the fascinating people who adore them all in equal measure.”
I’m unashamedly obsessed with my three Cornish Rexes, Coco, Columbo and Woody, but whereas I used to keep quiet about my enthusiasm, thanks to my fellow