Inside the book celebrating leopard print in pop culture history

If fashion’s had a love affair for the ages, it’s been with leopard-print. Powerful, seductive, rebellious, it’s had it’s time with just about every subculture and season, breaking and making trends. From sixties style setters to nineties fashion faux-pas, its stood the test of time, and still makes the statement it made back when it was appropriated in the Napoleonic wars: “I got the power”.

In homage to the iconic print, fashion journalist Hilary Alexander and publishing house Laurence King have teamed up to celebrate all things leopard. “From the Stone Age to the Digital Age”, the book declares, leopard has become “fashion’s most perennial print”. The definitive collection of the print, it features everyone who’s donned it at some point, from Donatella to Dalí, Liz Taylor to Lady Gaga.

Fashion’s obsession with leopard print has never been better described than in the words of Donatella Versace, who wrote the foreword to Leopard: “Why do we love leopard-print? So we can feel closer to something that is breathtakingly beautiful, graceful and precious… and just a little bit dangerous”.

Leopard, by Hilary Alexander, from Laurence King Publishing is available now online here.