Popular media personality and socialite; Kylie Jenner is currently trending online once again. She is under fire over a dress she wore to a fashion show featuring a lion’s head.
At the Schiaparelli fashion presentation on Monday in Paris, Kylie grabbed attention in a dress that featured a false life-sized lion’s head.
The piece was a part of a themed set that was displayed at the show. Models also walked the runway while wearing realistic-looking fake heads that were modeled after the wolves and leopards that appear in Dante’s Divine Comedy’s “Inferno.”
The outfit received attention and admiration from some commenters, but it also drew criticism from others. Even though the head was a fabrication, others objected to the style because they claimed it glorified animals by using them as trophies and fashion accessories.
“We have to stop showing animals as luxury ‘products,'” Dan O’Neill, a BBC host, and zoologist wrote in a comment on an official Schiaparelli Instagram post. “They may be made from foam, but these are endangered species that have historically been killed for their pelts to be turned into garments.”
“In fact after the fall of the Soviet Union, up to 80% of snow leopards were killed in parts of their range in part for the Russian fashion industry,” O’Neill added.
He continued: “Today there could be as few as 4,000 left in the wild. These images only show these animals have value in their death. They do not, their beauty lies in their life, their adaptations, and their evolutionary history. Not walking down a runway. Inspiration is powerful, and this is not good inspiration.”
The animal rights organization PETA, on the other hand, defended the outfit in a statement, arguing that it was a “message against trophy hunting,” and urging the continuation of similar “cruelty-free” designs.