PARIS:
Kim Kardashian flashed a new, platinum blonde hair-do at the Paris Fashion Week on Thursday as she watched the shows with rapper hubby Kanye West.
The attention-grabbing make-over by the normally brunette American reality TV star overshadowed the 2015 autumn collections unveiled by fashion houses Balmain and Lanvin, with photographers pushing to get snaps of the dyed diva.
Kardashian and West, both wearing all-black outfits, were joined by Kardashian’s mother Kris Jenner at the Balmain show.
The transformation into a blonde electrified celebrity-watchers on Twitter, where some fans gushed over how stunning she looked, others suggested she looked better before — and detractors snarked that she and American actor Jared Leto, who also turned up to the Balmain event with new platinum locks, were exchanging beauty tips.
Regardless, news of Kardashian as a bleached beauty easily became the most talked-about fashion statement at the Paris shows. Which is no mean feat at an event where the designers often try to outdo each other to get a slice of the limelight.
Rick Owens, an American stylist who created the biggest buzz at the last Paris fashion week in January by sending male models down the catwalk with their penises hanging out, trod more quietly on Thursday by presenting a relatively mild women’s ready-to-wear collection.
Amid the ankle-length, structured outfits coloured in brown and black, the most remarkable feature was sprayed-on gold masks worn by some of the models.
Owens told Women’s Wear Daily, a website reference for the fashion world, that the Big Thing in the show was using sequins for the first time.
“Especially after the men’s show, it was nice to do something sentimental and a bit naive,” he said.
Winter is coming
For theatrical flourish, fashionistas had to go to the spectacle put on by Indian designer Manish Arora. Flashy red and fuchsia get-ups that looked to be fantasy battledress dreamed up by manga artists lit up the catwalk.
Arora emphasised that the collection was a Bollywood take inspired by the hit US TV series “Game of Thrones” by having that fantasy world’s “Winter is Coming” motto sewn into some pieces and its theme music remixed as part of the soundtrack.
At Carven, those in the know were keen to see what direction new designers Adrien Caillaudaud and Alexis Martial, both aged 30, would take. The answer was: pants.
It was the first time the house has introduced pants into the collection, though the novel duo were careful to keep the A-line skirts and miniskirts that has made the brand a signature style for Parisian women.
The idea for Carven’s “new woman” was taken from the energy of Paris in the late 1960s, the designers said.
“We wanted to imagine what foreigners might feel about the Parisian woman: her elegance, an urban attitude, a sort of carefree approach,” said Caillaudaud.