The Insects of Fashion will Prevail

As Ancient Egyptian soldiers examined battle plans and shined their bronze chest plates, they not once forgot their choice of spiritual adornment. For a vast amount of these soldiers, live scarab beetles were a treasured necessity. Human beings have pulled insects into their fashion since the dawn of time. Something about arthropods fascinates the human eye — we must have it for ourselves. Mayan stories tell of princesses having their forbidden lovers turned to beetle necklaces. Victorian women had beetle wings sewn onto their dresses or wore these creatures as live accessories. This specific use of elytra was appropriated from Mughal India, where these sequenced wings adorned clothing of not just women, but of all genders and ages. Millennia before these clothing items, a Chinese empress was said to have had a cocoon drop into her tea, causing the discovery and invention of silk. Manchu women in the 19th century later incorporated butterfly designs into their silk robes. In the 80s, beetles were worn as living jewelry, and yet again giant living Madagascar hissing cockroaches were worn in the 2000s.

Bugs have been looked at as a creature worthy of creative inspiration in the modern day as well. For its Spring/Summer 2024 show, Paris's Haute Couture featured Rahul Mishra. His collection took from all sorts of insects, including dragonflies, fireflies, and moths. The World of WearableArt's 2026 show GLO! featured Katherine Bertram, who went on to win the People's Choice Award for her insectual piece. Thom Browne's Spring 2027 line featured at New York Fashion Week, titled "A Bug's Life," also followed this trend of making clothing based on insects. The brands EElytra and Alice Auaa are also famous for their bug-inspired fashion, with the ladder being known specifically for their spider web fabrics. With the rising addiction of technology and disconnect from nature of the present day, why does humanity keep going back to the same theme over and over again?

People's connection to the natural world has declined at an alarming 60% over the past two centuries. The invention of phones, a device designed to induce separation anxiety, has not helped this trend. We forget that we are animals. Though our intelligence sets us apart, we are still mammals just like our dogs, cats, rabbits, and the deer that roam our yards. People are designed to be in nature. We built our survival skills in nature. We created clothing, food, and shelter to protect us from said nature. The materials of every man-made invention were extracted from nature. Insects are beautiful works of our Earth, so they are bound to inspire our creativity. Though clothing was made to be a protection from the elements, human art has existed since we lived in cave dwellings. Bugs are so popularly intertwined into fashion because our connection to nature is inescapable — it is in our blood. Our connection to the land from which we were born and will die mixed with our artistry results in the bugs that continue to adorn our garments.