When Kylie Jenner stepped out during Paris Fashion Week in January with a large lion’s head fastened to a strapless black gown, she launched a thousand TikToks.
While Maison Schiaparelli is no stranger to incorporating shock factor into their runways, Jenner wearing the gown — which also appeared in their catwalk presentation — was the fashion house’s dramatic re-entry into the world after a period of relative stasis, when it was essentially a ‘sleeping beauty’ brand.
“This [runway] is definitely harnessing the power of media, fashion, virality and circulation of images,” Ricarda Bigolin, a fashion and textile design academic at RMIT University, told ABC RN’s Blueprint For Living.
“[Runways] are promotional devices; they’re not for entertainment, even though we might think they are, they’re actually to generate sales.”
While the ordinary consumer isn’t going to go out and buy a dress festooned with a life-size animal’s head, they may remember Jenner’s dress when buying their next perfume.
But high fashion can also be a way to talk about contemporary issues, says Dr Emily Brayshaw, a theatre costume designer and lecturer in design and fashion history at the University of Technology Sydney.
For instance, the Schiaparelli lion’s head was made from synthetic materials: “[It speaks to] this high-fashion history of luxury and fur, but really translates it in a wholly contemporary way … [and] it’s getting us to question our relationship to animals and the environment,” Brayshaw told ABC Arts.
Jenner’s runway-adjacent moment is just the latest example in a long history of spectacle on and around the runway; shocking moments that speak to larger changes in politics, society, art and technology.
Warning: this article contains nudity.
1910s: Gaby Deslys takes outrageous designs on tour
In the 1910s, French dance hall star and international celebrity Gaby Deslys collaborated with Parisian haute couture house Jeanne Paquin on a series of so-called “Gaby gowns”.
Paquin was among a…
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