Fuck It, I'm Wearing It: Too Many Animal Prints

I'm not a cougar, I just dress like one.

You always remember your first animal print. Mine was a black and brown, leopard-spotted, broad-shoulder-padded, silk blazer by Ellen Tracy that I’d cinch with a wide black belt and wear with the shortest black skirt imaginable so that my bestie and I could strut right up to the red ropes and get into nightclubs. It often worked.

I miss that jacket.

She’s probably hanging in someone else’s closet now (I like to donate my old clothes when I take something out of heavy rotation). But I’ve never quite given up my obsession with all things animal. Call it jungle fever (I’d actually prefer that you don’t), but it’s hard for me to resist the lewks I love. Case in point:

Scenes from my petting zoo.

Sometimes I like to mix and match; last week I met up with some college roomies for dinner and I wore the shirt you see far right with the skirt top right. The clashier the better—it’s fashion!

But my animal menagerie doesn’t stop there. You’ll spot (see what I did there?) evidence of it all around my living space:

Tigers, and leopards, and zebras oh my!

My animal-print jonesing tends to go in and out with the tide. Right now it’s a damn tsunami! I order a lot from Kate Hewko; I love this site because it embraces the idea that you can wear whatever you want, at whatever age you want. Age is nothing but a social security check waiting to happen.

One confession: I tend not to mix animal clothing with animal accessories with animal shoes. That’s overkill, and that is NOT fashion. Even obsessives like me know when to rein it in. Everything in moderation. (Or not. Just do you.)