Something new, exciting, and furry has scurried across the runway of a Paris Couture show. Rats, pigeons, and squirrels have debuted with a splash at a Schiaparelli’s show yesterday. Will this usher in a new era of gross-out chic?
Bugs and unsavory creatures have a surprisingly long history of worming their way into fashion. Starting around 3150 B.C., ancient Egyptians adorned themselves with the inherently unsavory scarab beetle. The black, six-legged bug represented resurrection because of its habit of rolling dung beneath twitchy little legs until a ball was formed, as the mythic god Khepri did so with the Sun. This creepy-crawly never did fall out of favor; Victorians, for one, had their own Egyptomania.
Inevitably, such ugly or absurdist references continued to crop up in fashion, but were limited to ready-to-wear. Just a sampling of examples include spring 2008, when there were white mice at Marc Jacobs, drawn with neon detail set against black (plus, who could forget his ongoing love with signature mouse flats?), or fall 2013, when Alber Elbaz scattered jewel-shelled beetles on tunics, pants, and dresses.
However, never before had such an unlikely, ugly menagerie made its way to the rarified world of couture—that is, until now. Fittingly, Marco Zanini revisited the rodent and its cohorts yesterday for his second showing at Schiaparelli. The storied house was once known for the catchphrase “Shocking,” thanks to its jolie laide grande dame, Elsa Schiaparelli. Never a great beauty, Schiaparelli was a creative force, imagining her own freckles as constellations (this would become a motif in future collections) and, as the story goes, when she was young tried to become pretty by planting flowers in her nose and ears.
And so, Zanini riffed on lowly animals otherwise considered ugly to the common man. First, there were pigeons (even the program notes mentioned these birds flock alongside rats in Central Park). Some came hidden in a print almost mistaken for William Morris except that it was all turquoise beaks and yellow beady eyes. More pigeons popped up again in the finale look—a flock imagined in iridescent gray rendered on white in an altogether surprising shape: sweetheart neckline, long sleeves, bustle, and train.
However, all these dirty birds couldn’t compare with the massive rats on other dresses—a few, in shades of lavender, mingling with squirrels with tails as bushy as the monkey-hair capelet worn by the model. There were no beetles, but better yet, moths. At last, behold, one of nature’s most under-appreciated insects and Zanini's sense of humor. Moths, like rats, are dark-dwelling creatures. Forget the cliched butterfly. We prefer Zanini’s shocking stand-in for celebrating transformation. Here’s hoping we see more examples of ugly as beautiful.