Animal print spent most of its history signalling money. Real skins were expensive and exotic, worn by rulers and religious figures in ancient Egypt, and leopard print returned as high fashion in the Art Deco years before Christian Dior built it into his 1947 New Look. Rock and roll performers picked it up in the 1950s, and glam rock made it flamboyant in the early 1970s. The reversal was deliberate. Punk adopted leopard print specifically to provoke, and in doing so inverted the hierarchy it had carried for half a century, converting a status pattern into a byword for tacky. Both readings survive, which is why the pattern still splits. YouGov finds Americans divide 28% positive to 38% negative on cheetah print, with women at 33% to 37% and men at 23% to 39%. Age barely moves it, running from 39% positive among 18 to 29 year olds to 18% among the over-65s, but no group reaches agreement.