A Leopard Never Changes Its Spots….It Just Evolves

Examining the history of fashion's most divisive print

First things first I told a little lie in the title (sue me) leopards don’t have spots they have rosettes, a cluster of small spots around a slightly darker centre. Jaguars, a big cat larger in stature than the leopard and known for its big bite, have similar rosettes to a leopard however the Jaguars are bigger and less dense. Strangely it’s the cheetah and leopard coats that are always being confused with each other when the difference is quite significant, a cheetah does have spots. I have included a helpful visual guide so that you, my lovely readers can familiarise yourself with each cat’s markings before we delve in.

Animal prints go way back we’re talking The Flinstone’s era however it wasn’t yet a fashion statement it was more about wearing fur pelts freshly skinned off your dinner to drape across your body to avoid frostbite. It wasn’t until the Roman Emperors and Ancient Egyptians started donning animal skins that they began to hold a bit more significance. In these cultures, the skins became a symbol of power and wealth and Roman Emperor Honorius banned leopard print from being worn by others so that it would keep its exclusivity and worth. Meanwhile in African Zulu cultures wearing leopard print represented celebration. By the turn of the eighteenth century, European aristocrats began bringing furs home after having travelled across the continent. Napoleon’s trips to North Africa inspired an animal print craze across France with the population clamouring for a chance to get their hands on fur coats and rugs. Leopard pelts began to make their way into portraiture with various women of status choosing to be depicted as Diana the Roman goddess of wild animals and the hunt, most notably Marie-Aurore de Saxe, a French noblewoman and freethinker and Swedish baroness Charlotte du Rietz did so.

Animal pelts continued to be a symbol of wealth and aristocracy up until the early 20th century. In 1932 the tides turned when actress Maureen O’Sullivan played Jane in the film Tarzan the Apeman inspiring many women to embrace animal prints. Fifteen years later Christian Dior debuted his groundbreaking ‘New Look’ collection which was the first runway show to feature Leopard rosettes, but not in fur form, as a print. Dior was inspired by his muse Mitzah Bricard who often wore the pattern and was quoted after the collection debuted as saying “If you’re fair and sweet, don’t wear it”, “it” being leopard print.

Over the next couple of decades, the print came to symbolise two types of women, one was of elite glamour. Hollywood actresses such as Joan Crawford and Audrey Hepburn were pictured and seen on film adorning the print and in 1962 Oleg Cassini dressed Jackie Kennedy in a leopard-skin coat. Much like anything Jackie Kennedy wore the coat was marvelled at and created a desire in American women to own one. It’s estimated that 250,000 leopards were killed to produce coats to fulfil the demand Jackie Kennedy had created. Cassini went on to express guilt many times over the years for the harm he had caused to the leopard population. The other type of woman that the print developed connotations with was the predatory older woman. This trend was spurred on by the creation of the Mrs Robinson character in The Graduate who went on to inspire similar characters type casted as ‘cougars’ in other mainstream media.

As we travelled into the 70s and 80s leopard print transformed from something glamorous into something subversive and was adopted by the punks and rockers of the music industry. The print's association with femininity and sexuality made it a fitting match for male musicians who wanted to challenge societal norms and cause public outrage with not only their songs but also their image. Musicians who rocked the leopard print look included Debbie Harry, Sid Vicious, Adam Ant, Freddie Mercury and David Bowie.

The 1990s saw new heights of mainstream fashion culture with supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Kate Moss becoming celebrities in their own right and the proliferation of mass production of clothing and development of synthetic materials. During the nineties and noughties designer Roberto Cavalli, often referred to as the ‘leopard King’, was in his heyday taking on a more is more approach. Cavalli became synonymous with super slim models bronzed to an inch of their life with tousled mains slouching down the catwalk covered in animal prints. Cavalli famously said “I copy the dress of an animal because I love to copy God. I think God is the most fantastic designer” and the famous yearly fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2004, “Wild: Fashion Untamed” highlighted his designs and the animal prints he had become synonymous with.

Azzedine Alaïa’s AW91 collection became one of the most defining for the late designer's career and featured an entire section dedicated to (you guessed it) leopard print with models strutting down the runway in signature knitted body-conscious designs. It was all-over leopard print including berets, bags, boots and bodysuits. To this day the collection is still referenced and hit the headlines again when Kim Kardashian wore a full archival look from the collection. Vogue described the leopard-print knits as “not only transcendent but transformative, adding a new and feral sense of animal magnetism” to Alaïa’s body-con silhouettes.

Female performers also began to embrace the print in the 90s’s none may be quite as famous as Scary Spice, aka Mel B, of the British pop group the Spice Girls. Each Spice Girl had their moniker and individual look Scary Spice incidentally wore leopard print A LOT. Mel B since revealed the inspiration behind her love of leopard print was because she saw “Bet Lynch on Coronation Street when I was younger and she was wearing leopard print and I thought OH GO, ONE DAY I’m going to have everything leopard print, and I did”.  The Spice Girls had a chokehold on pop culture during the nineties with their debut album Spice selling 23 million copies around the globe and young girls everywhere trying to embody their favourite member. 

1999 is when we see Oleg Cassini, the man who dressed Jackie Kennedy in the leopard coat, unveil a 100-piece faux fur line at a Humane Society gala benefit. The guilt of how many leopards were killed as a result of the fur coat he designed for Jackie Kennedy plagued Cassini and inspired him to create this line. In 1999 he was living on a farm with over 100 rescued animals and hadn’t designed with real fur since the leopard coat in 1962. On average it takes eight leopard skins to make one fur coat and the popularity of leopard fur in fashion played a large role in pushing leopards towards extinction. It’s estimated that in the 1960s 50,000 leopards were killed for the fashion industry alone. In 1975 the International Fur Trade Federation banned endangered species furs like Leopards. Synthetic fur fabrics were extremely popular in the 90s and up until today as a result of this ban.

Leopard print has experienced several iterations throughout the years and in the last couple of decades has come to signify multiple things all at once. It can be seen as tacky, cheap and low-brow when seen to be worn by TV soap characters and national reality stars. In direct contrast, it gets described as chic, stylish and bold when the likes of Beyonce or Rihanna wear the print. Every other year we experience a slew of headlines announcing the return of leopard print and how best it should be styled this time around. One look on TikTok and you will find hundreds of users describing the print as a neutral, Shania Twain even said this in an article she penned for ELLE USA.

The longevity and popularity of the print brings into question to what extent the modern wearer of leopard print perceives the fashion choice as having to do with the wild animals. Dr Caroline Good, of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, found a disconnect between the continued interest in leopard print fashion and the lack of concern for the animal itself. Dr Good studied interest in leopard print fashion by analysing traditional news outlets, Google activity and Instagram posts. The study found 2.9 million posts on Instagram with the hashtag #leopard print and 80,000 English-language news articles over 15 years and there was little evidence of this interest led to discussions surrounding leopards themselves. In traditional news media, fewer than 2% of mentions of leopard print were associated with the leopard’s conservation status. Dr Good and the director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Professor David Macdonald, want to find a way to connect fashion to the urgency of leopard conservation and figure out how to turn this into something that could practically benefit the species.

There are nine subspecies of leopard all characterised by they’re iconic coats. A leopard's fur is designed to help them camouflage their bodies as they move through grass and trees hunting their prey or hiding from potential danger. Ironically, a pattern that helps these animals blend in is the same pattern humans wear to make themselves stand out. It’s hard to pin down the true allure of leopard print and what has made it so much more popular than other animal prints like snake, cow and giraffe. Donatella Versace penned the foreword for Hilary Alexander’s predominantly visual reflection on Leopard print in fashion, Leopard, that was published in 2018. In that foreword, Versace mused “why do we love leopard print?” and came to the conclusion it was “so we can feel closer to something that is breathtakingly beautiful, graceful and precious … and just a little bit dangerous.”