Look of the Week
Featuring the good, the bad and the ugly, ‘Look of the Week’ is a regular series dedicated to unpacking the most talked about outfit of the last seven days. This week, a trend has been gaining momentum. It began at the Schiaparelli haute couture show in Paris on Monday, when Demi Moore arrived in a cheetah print catsuit and matching coat designed by the house’s creative director Daniel Roseberry. Then, at the Chanel show on Tuesday, a scene-stealing look from VIP guest Dua Lipa seemed to channel Fran Fine in a brash, tailored skirt suit and 2.55 flap bag. Every inch of the pop star was adorned in a mesmerizing yellow, black and red swirl that resembled animal print on acid.
By Wednesday, it was clear the memo had spread from the city of lights all the way to New York when Kendall Jenner stepped out in a beaded tiger stripe midi dress. Both outfits were drawn from Chanel’s Métiers d’Art 2026 collection, presented in December last year. It’s the ‘80s staple, but with a twist. Since his debut last October, Mattieu Blazy has steadily made a name for himself, gently reinventing what once felt static—tweed, twin sets and pearls, dress coats—into clothes that are new, exciting and fluid. It makes sense, then, that something as familiar as animal print looks fresh and singular through his perspective.
Animal Print Reimagined
Lipa and Jenner’s looks are far from your typical mob-wife costumes. There is no coiffed hair, no stacks of gold jewelry, no Soprano’s styling. Instead, Blazy’s take is more playful—brighter, brasher and, in the case of Jenner’s tiger dress, in textiles that look like toy pieces. Chanel wants women to float in its couture. While Moore kept her front row look more conservative, Schiaparelli has long been experimenting with the boundaries of animal-inspired fashion (remember Kylie Jenner’s lifesize lionhead?).
This season, Roseberry continued his mission with a haute couture collection that featured replica reptilian textures, protruding tusk breasts, scorpion bustiers and a translucent two-piece skirt suit rendered in hyperreal blowfish scales. According to trend analyst @databutmakeitfashion, standard leopard print is already on the rise. Some are calling it the Boom Boom era of fashion—where the ‘80s doctrine of fur, clashing prints and a greedy, more-is-more approach to dressing feels like a fun cosplay opportunity during an otherwise bleak economic, political and social reality.
But maybe this time around, designers understand that to stop us doomscrolling, the animal prints of 2026 need to be louder and more outrageous than ever. A new species entirely.
