Why animal prints are prowling the high street

J-Lo in LA this year

There are trends, the seasonal diktats that filter down from the catwalks and on to the high street, and then there is the mass proliferation of an idea so big that it transcends fashion. Welcome to the zoo! In this, the autumn of 2018, leopard print is no longer just a look – it has become a bona fide movement.

Cast an eye around your local pub, work do or big night out and consider the safari-load of animal prints on show: cheetah, snake, tiger and yes, the sleekest of them all: the leopard. Where before coats and shoes had the fashion monopoly on animal prints, allowing women to gently accessorise their way to the jungle, now entire wardrobes are rotating around animal skirts, animal shirts, animal tights and animal shoes. Sometimes bravely, sometimes brilliantly, all at once.

Soaring sales of animal print clothing helped Asos post a £500m rise in sales last year, the firm revealed last week. The online fashion retailer sold 1.3 million animal print garments across both menswear and womenswear, offering 2,000 options during the period.

Of course, the fashion lot has been telling us this for months: leopard print never really went away. But thanks to the February shows in which Tom Ford’s sublime collection led the pack, a roaring trade (sorry) was to be expected for the colder months. And so Réalisation’s leopard Naomi skirt became “the most viral clothing piece of the year”. Reformation, & Other Stories and Zara have been selling out of their leopard-y pieces week in, week out. Guides on how to correctly clash your animal patterns were churned out by the industry all summer long.


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