With hooves, trotters and free-range chicklets gracing this seasons’s runways, you might be wondering whether George Orwell’s Animal Farm was less about capitalism’s impending doom and more about fashion’s future. Indeed, were the AW23 collections anything to go by, the English novelist was not only a literary great, but a better trend forecaster than Miuccia Prada and K-Hole combined.
Granted, it’s not the first time we’ve seen Old MacDonald’s crew on the catwalk. Just last season, JW Anderson peppered his collection with bunny-splashed Y-fronts and his now-signature frog boots. Before that, Gucci shot Harry Styles nursing a litter of piglets for its Cruise 2019 campaign. Stella McCartney’s AW20 collection made cow suits cool in her bid to turn fashion veggie, touting “More pleasure, less leather” with a campaign of cartoon cows going at it.
But this season, ethical statements are a subplot. Now, the novelty lies in an aesthetic shift towards the lowly delights of livestock we once deemed dirty. At a time when banal is back in vogue, it only makes sense that splashier displays of animal fare, like Schiaparelli’s lion-head taxidermy, would fall flat. Instead, animals closer to home make a far better mascot of our times than poacher trophies. After all, we’re worried about the price of milk, not mink coats and crocodile Birkins.
For proof, look no further than Collina Strada’s barnyard bonanza, which saw models adorned in mucky-pup prints and Isamaya French’s animal prosthetics, spanning pig and cow ears to cattle-tag piercings and donkey noses. Add to this a bejewelled hay-bail holdall, and farmhouse chic takes on a whole new meaning. Sure, the show’s title, “Please Don’t Eat My Friends”, sounds like another meat is murder moment, but in practice, the bull-horned slip dresses and hoof-print Vans seemed more like an endorsement of underrated farmyard aesthetics than an animal-rights march.
In this vein, Christopher Kane rendered pigs and yellow chicks across bodycons and high-slit dresses in tiled, AI-generated prints. The runway results were – like most AI art – tacky but still a little bit cute, saturated in saccharine pink and canary yellow that glistened from snouts and feathers alike. Fortunately, for Christopher’s favourite underdogs – what he dubbed “working-class animals” – this also gave them a godly lustre, elevating the lumpen livestock to luxury status. That was his goal: pare back on materials and decorative flourishes to highlight the beauty in the simplest of places, whether it’s a pig pen or chicken coop.
Even Daniel Lee’s debut at Burberry followed suit, peppering collared shirt dresses, skirts and T-shirts with a bobbing duck in regal gold and pond-water green. Teamed with a yellow-billed Peruvian hat, complete with dangling webs, and a flurry of cockerel feathers strewn across knitwear and overcoats, the collection made a heartwarming nod to the quintessentially British charm of the UK’s farmlands. The collection was speaking to an older Britain, when farming was more viable; this was Lee’s love letter a varied nation, one rooted in clubland subculture and, conversely, the sweet hum of manure and freshly cut straw.
None of this is surprising, though. As designers dial back the drama for more down-to-earth fashion, a little appreciation for our farmyard pals only feels right. If that sounds pig-headed, then good. They might not be the chicest creatures to grace our planet, but they sure know how to make the best out of a shit situation: lay down and roll in it.
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Images courtesy of Spotlight