HEAR ME ROAR
Samantha Murray Greenway on learning to love leopard print, a fashion classic that’s back for the season.
Personal style is our own messaging system, a sartorial semaphore that’s not only moulded by what’s available in the clothes shops but, sometimes more intriguingly, by our likes and dislikes. You don’t have to be wildly interested in fashion to recognise that there are some clothes you gravitate towards, and others which instantly repulse. The latter might be so hard-wired that, in some cases, you don’t even know why.
For instance, whereas I will stop in my tracks to admire a person who has put together a colour clash or a mix of prints, I would never contemplate wearing something similar myself. Why? All I know is that too much visual busy-ness makes me feel weirdly weighed down. Whereas the reason I find Lurex such a turn-off is as clear as day. Yes, the glitzy metallic can look disco-tastic, but in my mind it also registers as scratchily, synthetically, sweatily uncomfortable. I’m not willing to suffer for fashion.
Some people feel that way about tight-waists, others can’t bear the thought of fluffy mohair touching their skin (surprisingly common). And then there is divisive leopard print, a pattern that makes a marked and cyclical appearance. I know, because I tend to write about it each time it comes up: generally from a viewpoint of despair.
Is that because it’s too brash, too animal, too outright sexy? Possibly. Working as a fashion editor I fought my reflexes; after all, they say it’s good to leave your comfort zone. So, I once bought a jersey leopard print wrap dress. Did it make me feel dynamic, powerful, or as slinkily fabulous and go-getting as Diane von Furstenburg, the woman who designed it? We’ll never know because it never made it through my bedroom door. Each time I tried to wear it, I’d end up changing it for something less… well, just less. After it languished in my wardrobe for a year or so, I gave it to a friend. She wore it magnificently well.
That was 20-odd years ago and there have been plenty of leopard interludes since. And now the pattern has come around again. Full-on leopard print outfits have been seen on catwalks (Michael Kors and Dolce & Gabbana) and red carpets (Rosamund Pike, Winnie Harlow).
“Leopard is an interesting print,” says Emma Main, cofounder of Auckland boutique Maman. “I suppose once upon a time people felt it was tacky or tarty, but it can be quite luxurious, mysterious, feminine and, as we’ve discovered with our new homewares, masculine, too.”
At Maman, the pattern is as likely to pop up on shirts and underwear as it is on shoelaces, paper napkins and the container for dishwashing liquid. “You can go as loud or as soft as you want,” says Main. If you want to calm it down a clever mix is required. “We have a Rixo dress with the top half in a pretty polka dot and the lower half in silky leopard. The polka dot is like a soft contradiction.”
She mentions a coat from La Prestic Ouiston, the French label that specialises in luxury fabrics. “Their reversible silk duster coat has a Pucci-style print on one side, and full-noise leopard on the other, so if you wear it with the leopard print inside, when you walk you see just a lick of leopard. It gives it a bit of an edge.“
Small pieces of the pattern, cropping up in unexpected places, might just swing it for me. Like the leopard print holdall that added a bit of quirk to Halle Berry’s faded cropped jeans, heavy work boots and white T-shirt, or Irina Shayk’s take on 90s style: trainers with a slip dress that had a layer of leopard peeking out from underneath.
My favourites, though, are the Adidas x Wales Bonner Samba sneakers which have sold fast. The old-school sports style is decked out in tan leopard print with a baby blue trim. Slightly kitsch, slightly street and very tempting. A lick of laid-back leopard: I might learn to love it yet.