Recently I’ve been told by a trusted source (my bestfriend) that I need to stop buying cheetah print because it’s getting weird, and I don’t want to become one of those women that lives alone, only wears one color, and has a parakeet that she takes on walks. To which I said, sounds GREAT, bring on the birds.
I believe it’s utterly respectable to have something evergreen in your life that you obsess over thanklessly, Because if you switch around too often people might think your spine got swapped out with a chocolate eclair. Further, in this moment of fast, fast, FAST fashion, we must beat on, boats against the trends. That’s why we’re launching a little Substack monthly column about our obsessions.
To kick things off, I want to talk about my favorite pattern: cheetah. I actually don’t care about the difference between cheetah and leopard print. I’m sorry if that offends the big cat community. If you’re close enough to a cheetah that you can tell the difference, you’re too close to the animal, and you’re too close to me!
My obsession with animal print started when I was a kid. In my bedroom at the Chelsea Hotel, my mom installed a luxurious wall to wall leopard carpet. What followed was a love of glitz, glam and camp. Of course there were setbacks. In high school I rebelled against being fab and having good taste, by exclusively wearing stretchy pants and shirts I stole from the Urban Outfitters sale section. In college things got even worse. There wasn’t a leopard, cheetah, or zebra in a ten mile radius. I bobbed my hair (unfortunate for my hair texture), started wearing sallow brown tones. It was a low.
Only in the past couple years have I really been strong and comfortable enough in myself to return to that first love. In fact, I’ve found most of growing up is realizing that you had pretty good taste as a kid, before you get trapped in listening to the world’s opinion. In the past month I’ve acquired cheetah rainboots, cheetah flats, cheetah pumps, cheetah skirt, all on TOP of my copious previously existent cheetah collection. What can I say? It’s a neutral.
A paraket
Not exactly the best archived video, but I love this clip of 90-year-old sexploitation filmmaker Doris Wishman wearing a cheetah print top on Conan O'Brien promoting her last movie DILDO HEAVEN a few months before she died https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-LCPd1ThsI