When Dante Alighieri spoke of the tortured apparitions he encountered on his voyage through hell, he described witnessing the souls of heretics being entombed in flames, adulterers battered by the winds of lust, and the violent submerged in boiling blood. There have been nine circles in total but there must have been a tenth: dedicated to the form of folks that write things like “do higher”, “unfollowed”, and “it’s a no” underneath a fashion brand’s Instagram post. That is what happened after Daniel Roseberry showed his latest couture collection at Schiaparelli – inspired by The Divine Comedy – where foam-moulded lion heads, snow leopards, and wolves accessorised hourglass gowns. 

“It’s glamourising trophy hunting as fashion again as they appear extremely real,” said one person on Twitter. “The worth of an actual lion’s head will sky rocket.” One other, on Suzy Menkes’ Instagram, said “How about putting an entire indigenous person on her [Irina Shayk’s] body? We’ll now understand the seriousness of the matter.” Though there are instances where critique is well-founded (like when a designer pedals hate speech, or is outed as a sexual predator) rarely is this type of moral posturing warranted. Social media has created a recent lens for just about all popular culture to be breathlessly analysed and fashion, perceived to be excessive and meaningless, is a dartboard for its most cynical hot takes.

Runways have at all times inspired strong reactions (humour, wonder, disgust) but the present locus appears to be rage – stirred by Balenciaga’s controversial SS23 campaign, which was quickly connected to tin foil hat theories about paedophile rings and satanism on TikTok. Just as Dante had lost his way in life, and was banished to the fiery abyss, so too have web users. “This may send the flawed message that it’s beautiful to walk around with an animal’s head attached to your clothes,” as another person commented, despite the creations being created from resin, wool, and silk. That individuals think a couture collection might ennoble big game hunters is a bit outsized; the designs harboured no violence, the animals weren’t bloodied, impaled, or punctured with bullet wounds. 

The aphorism was that everybody online was a critic, but they’re now also conspiracy theorists. Even PETA – as questionable because the organisation could also be – has seen the worth in Roseberry’s craftsmanship. In an interview with TMZ, the charity’s president Ingrid Newkirk said “[The look] celebrates lions’ beauty and should be a press release against trophy hunting, wherein lion families are torn apart to satisfy human egotism… These fabulously revolutionary three-dimensional animal heads show that where there’s a will, there’s a way.” People often ask contemporary designers to be bolder of their visions, to channel the savage glamour of Alexander McQueen, but they wouldn’t have been in a position to stomach all of the morbid fascinations with death, gore, and sex that he recommend. “Now I actually see why Alexander McQueen didn’t let these people into his shows,” as TheKimbino wrote on Twitter. 

Similarly, animal rights activists have spent a long time campaigning for an industry-wide ban on fur, but remain unsatisfied with fashion’s alternatives. The identical people are usually not outraged when faux-leopard print or crocodile skin emerges on the runway, despite the environmental footprint of manufacturing those synthetic substitutes. A few of the sillier criticisms which have surfaced prior to now 24 hours have challenged Roseberry to faux-taxidermy a human’s head as a fashion accoutrement. “How would u feel if those were dogs, cats and even an individual’s head?,” one person commented on Schiaparelli’s Instagram, seemingly unaware that Rick Owens, Shayne Oliver, and Alessandro Michele have actually done that before. 

It stands to reason that the identical righteousness – and annoying, virtuous tone – isn’t directed towards other visual arts with the identical enthusiasm. “It really proves how people undervalue fashion as an art form and reduce it solely to consumerism because hyperrealism in other visual arts is hardly debated at this scale,” as HFT member Chloe Kennedy notes. Might galleries and museums start putting a ban on Gentileschi, Goya, and Caravaggio for encouraging people to behead their enemies and eat their young like a flank of raw meat? If anything, the gathering compounded Elsa Schiappareli’s long-held interest in surrealism, where (cooked) lobsters figured on empire-waisted dresses and metal insects were strung together in acetate necklaces. 

The reality of those motifs proved less unsettling because they were more cartoonish, and folks can’t project an emotional world onto beetles as they’d with mammals. In his accompanying show notes, Roseberry said the leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf represented “lust, pride, and avarice” – just as they did in The Divine Comedy – but perhaps they’ve now also develop into the unwitting symbols of their very own ferocious commentators, their silent screams frozen into foam. All that is to say: God help us when Damien Hirst, who’s best known for preserving cows, sharks, and sheep in formaldehyde, launches his own – for now rumoured – fashion line.