Fashion: Oh Lala: The Leo look is back – why?

The pedestrian zone or supermarket sometimes act like a zoo or a savannah – leopard fur pattern everywhere: on blouses, leggings, pants, skirts, clothes, jackets, shoes. Animal prints are announced. The term “leopard” should not always be taken literally, sometimes it is perhaps also a cheek, jaguar, ozelot, tiger – or even giraffe or zebra.

We should also not grasp the term “prints” here, since it not only means prints, but the pattern itself – whether printed on fabric, woven, tied, painted or otherwise made as a patterned area.

The spectrum of people who carry Leo-Prints and Co. ranges from the US first lady at a price gala to erotic model Micaela Schäfer, from Hollywood star at a film press conference to the north German groom in a leaf suit when word. At a “Leopartey” in a Berlin roof garden club, the Leo-Look recently was dress code.

Animal prints have also been given bags, pillows, dishes and other accessories in recent years. This was just considered improper because it was reminiscent of the unculture of colonialist hunting trophies.

Anna Sophie Müller, lecturer for textile and fashion at the European University of Flensburg, sees the Leo look ambivalent. “Leo-Prints were never completely gone in fashion. Fascinating animals. But the codes, i.e. attributions of meaning, they change enormously.”

“In the past I thought Leo look was impossible”

“I thought a year ago: Leopard look is totally” in “, I need that now,” says a mid-sixties in Berlin. “So bought the blouse and rain jacket. In the past, I thought Leo-Look was impossible. And the blouse now was also the absolute bad buy because I still feel like Aunt Käthe in the early 1960s. Anyone who wore Leo at the time was guaranteed not to be wild.”

Now Animal Print is suddenly totally popular, even among young people. “The rain jacket, a blouson with a hood, I also find really cool because the station wagon is somehow weird,” says the woman from Berlin. “I only think these prints are good if they are used in small doses when they are well combined with plain -colored things – so somehow this is only original as a break.”

A mid -forties from Mülheim on the Ruhr feels like that: “I think it often comes over cheap or there are people in it who sew on other patterns more authentic. I personally prefer to wear flower patterns. They are colorful and have a good mood.”

The women’s magazine “Glamor” writes that the Leo print is associated with terms such as “sexy”, but also “trashy”, is due to the fact that it was often worn in films by sensual and relevant figures. “Over the past decades, fashion brands have repeatedly tried to solve the animal print from its seductive or” trashy “image.” Among them were the Scottish fashion designer Christopher Kane or Ex-Gucci designer Alessandro Michele.

Digidity and political incorrectness of earlier decades

The weekly newspaper “Die Zeit” said in midsummer 2024, all animal prints surrounded by a nostalgic haze: “Colonial mastermore arrogance of past epochs, when the wild animals or trophies were put from Africa and Asia.” They mostly also looked ironic: “A blouson with a leopard fur pattern flirted with the wickness of the 60s and 1970s fashion, their political incorrectness in terms of materials and place of origin.”

Pattern stands for something different today than before

This is no longer everything that the Leo look can stand for, says textile scientist Müller: “This can be completely opposite and almost paradoxical: This pattern stood for colonial achievements and stands postcolonial for exactly the opposite; it stood for exotic, luxury and power and currently for vegan alternatives if, for example, it is only worn as an art fur.”

Müller suspects that Animal Prints in the current zeitgeist could often also be a kind of “anti -speciesist statement”. What should that mean? Speciesism means something like racism or sexism, only that discrimination here does not happen because of the skin color, hair, origin or because of gender, but due to the species.

Anti-speciesism is accordingly an ethical attitude that turns to discriminate on living beings because of their membership. A new fashion theoretical approach. To wear leopard fur pattern is philosophy.