Even though I’m a self-confessed cat lady, there’s one fashion trend that I haven’t been able to get behind—leopard print. Perhaps it’s something to do with its inherent fierceness. The print symbolises both power and restraint, elegance and drama. It feels like something you can’t wear unless you embody those qualities, and to be honest, I see myself more as vegetable-munching prey than predator. But those qualities are exactly why designers have long been obsessed with big cats and their pelts. As Donatella Versace put in the foreword for the book Leopard: Fashion’s Most Powerful Print: “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.”
Ever since her brother Gianni Versace sent out a series of iconic spotted looks in 1992, the brand has stayed loyal to the motif, continuing even into the current fall/winter 2025-26 season when they showed coats lined with lush leopard spots as well as dotted party skirts and bodysuits. And Versace is not alone. Brands like Roberto Cavalli, Dolce & Gabbana, and Michael Kors have long championed animal prints of varying kinds. Christian Dior even included a leopard-print dress he called the ‘Jungle’ in his first 1947 collection, something that the design team would have referenced for the new ballet flats in the same print they launched this year.
This year, in fact, has been all about animal prints—not just leopard spots but also tiger and zebra stripes, and even cow and deer hides. It’s a veritable jungle out there. You can’t open Instagram anymore without spotting someone wearing them in the wild. Whether it’s Hailey Bieber in a body-hugging cheetah-print dress (the most recent one was by Saint Laurent Paris), Ananya Panday in a zebra-stripe coat, Dua Lipa in a spotted bikini on vacay or Kareena Kapoor Khan in a golden Sabyasachi sari covered in black dots (the last one resulted in a 57 per cent spike in searches for leopard prints on Google in India). It’s the same on the runway. A quick search on Tagwalk reveals 143 animal-print looks this season. There were #Mobwife worthy coats at Khaite, Dolce & Gabbana, and Tod’s, more killer looks at Roberto Cavalli, and even the queen of minimalism herself, Phoebe Philo, dug her teeth into the trend with a cuddly animal-print onesie.
But all of this is still aspirational. For real inspiration, we decided to ask a few stylish women how they wear their animal prints. Are they treating it as a neutral, as TikTok has been debating? Would they wear an animal-print sari to a wedding? The biggest takeaway: it’s up to you how you wear it. Just make sure you bring a personality to match.
Angelique Raina, founder and designer, Acquire
What was the last piece of clothing in an animal print that you wore recently?
My rule with animal print is: it has to be vintage. I associate it with photos of my mother in the ’80s, so it nods to that context versus being a response to the trend cycle. I wore this fitted leopard-print dress that’s hers. It’s an homage to genes too: how it fit her, it fits me too!
How do you like to style it?
Being wise about the occasion is key, so it’s always with minimalist leather accessories or something acrylic that’s got more sheen than detail to pare the print down and let it absorb the attention.
Would you wear animal print to the office? Or a wedding?
Flat-out no, unless it’s a theme party.
What’s your preferred animal print?
I prefer leopard or Dalmatian spots because of the cultural context. I can’t do the zebra or cow because I feel it crosses into costume territory; I don’t associate those prints with my childhood, and cows in India are not like the factory-made depiction of an American cowboy kind of cow. But the leopard and Dalmatian are something we’ve seen in Hollywood movies, and India had its own variant of ’80s ‘mob’ nostalgia too.
Your go-to styling tip?
Pare down everything, from hair to makeup. Although, a nice, bold dark red lip doesn’t hurt.
