“Please don’t eat my friends” is Collina Strada’s Fall 2023 ready-to-wear collection title. You might not recognize the phrase; I’m sure you’d recognize it by its outrageous prosthetics by Isamaya Ffrench. Hillary Taymour, Collina Strada’s creative director and founder, debuted this collection to be an ecosystem of all animals, big and small. As we see season to season, Taymour is constantly taking inspiration from the outside world. According to her, this collection stands as a representation of the current economic situation of most Americans. Taymour wants her consumer to feel confident in purchasing an expensive luxury item from her brand, and she wants to “tone down” her clothing.
Although the clothing still showcases the iconic Collina Strada signature house staples like crushed velvet, skirt belts, and avant-garde silhouettes, these items are paired with more casual styles downplaying them. We see quite a few “trendy” items with Collina Strada’s trademark twists. We see a beautiful eco-satin brown maxi dress with a deep cowl neck exposing the back. While that’s a style we tend to see quite a bit, Taymour added horns on each shoulder, tying it into the runway experience. We also see Taymour’s pomeranian Powwie make an appearance on the runway. Powwie is pictured on a shirt while the model is holding him down the runway. Another standout from the show is Strada’s quite literal take on animal print. Throughout almost all the looks, we see reptilian skin prints and animal fur prints. With Taymours decision to tone down her pieces, it’s clear she decided to bring in that fun, exciting Collina Strada signature through the makeup. Beaks, horns, and whiskers extruding from models’ faces seem to be a repeating theme throughout the show. We see full animal faces constructed over the faces of models, horns, and floppy ears out of the others, transforming them into a hybrid animal-human. Taking a closer look, you’ll notice the prosthetics that were painted two days beforehand consist of the colors and patterns we see on the actual outfits of the models. Not only were the models in animal prosthetics, but they were also acting as them, too, galloping, crawling, sniffing, purring and barking down the runway. This sparked quite a controversy in the high fashion community. While some appreciate what Taymour is doing, the internet has circled with statements like “I can’t keep defending high fashion” and “I take back saying I want to be a model.” While a little controversy never hurts, a few showgoers posted how terrifying the show was on their social media. Which I can understand, but shows these days need to do something crazy and gimmicky to stand out and bring attention to themselves within the fashion community, and with this show, Collina Strada has done it.
Words by Anna Jara.
Graphic by Anna McGregor.