ANIMAL ATTRACTION
How a leopard skin cloaked Egyptian princess named Princess Nefertiabet appeared to be resurrected from the dead for Azzedine Alaia’s Fall 1991 Collection… Nefertiabet, meaning ‘Beautiful One of the East,’ is most famously depicted on a painted limestone funerary stele dating back to the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Within the stele, she is shown seated on a bull-footed stool before an offering table displaying a funerary feast, as well as libations, livestock, incense, “the best” cosmetic ointments, green and black eye paint, medicinal Zizyphus, and fabric… plenty to keep her well equipped while traveling to the great beyond. Discovered in her tomb in Giza, and now residing in the Louvre’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities, the relief depicts her wearing a long wig and a panther-skin garment. Princess Nefertiabet was no doubt a fashionable clothes horse in her day, as the entire right rectangular section of the stele represents a detailed list of the thousands of yards of various types of linen fabric she was equipped with for her stylish afterlife… How fitting that Monsieur Alaia once said “…I am bad with the timeline. I am the age of the Pharaohs. I’ve erased all the dates...” Perhaps in this case, dates are indeed irrelevant as animal prints never seem to go out of style…
“What made the show so unforgettable was its appealing anthropomorphism—his leopard-print knits were not only transcendent, but transformative, adding a new and feral sense of “animal magnetism” to his body-con silhouettes.” wrote Vogue of the collection. Alaia’s animal prints helped further the idea that Nefertiabet’s leopard print one-shouldered gown was, and is, shockingly au courant… In her book, Fierce: The History of Leopard Print, author Jo Weldon suggests that while wild cats use their graphic markings as camouflage to blend in with their surroundings when hunting for prey, fashion utilizes the animal print as a means to stand out. “Those who choose to wear leopard print may not mean to say that they are predators, but they are definitely saying they are not.” • All runway images courtesy of Vogue • All Collages by Sarah Aaronson
