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Paris Haute Couture Week Is an All-Star, Reassuringly Surreal Circus

On and off the Paris Haute Couture Week runways, Kim Kardashian, Naomi Campbell, Nicole Kidman, Julia Fox, and Emma Watson are all dressed up—and driving the photographers mad.

For a long time now, couture accolades have wondered what exactly is up with New York Fashion Week, a time-honored tradition that’s diminished in relevance over the years due to the popularity of the internet and the growth of globalized brand influence. Haute Couture Week in Paris, meanwhile, has become the white-hot center of high-profile, avant-garde dressing, and this week, a flurry of celebrities emphasized this state of affairs by showing out in a kaleidoscope of eyebrow-raising outfits.

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Paris Couture Week: Where Fashion Goes Wild

Liza Foreman

Always influential, weird, and just a little bit off, Julia Fox made an appearance in a red, skintight latex crop top with oversized bare breast details, topped off with a denim duster and denim thigh-high boots. While other celebrities might be leaning more in Fox’s direction lately, she’s been doing this kind of Alien in High Femme Drag routine for a long time, and it rules.

Often, Fox looks straight-up, architecturally scary; in this Paris snap, she stalks toward the camera in a pure white crop top and swirling white skirt, her impossibly smooth stomach exposed.

Kim Kardashian, who later made her first official appearance in a Balenciaga runway show alongside Dua Lipa and Nicole Kidman, was briefly overshadowed by her own child when she and North West were snapped running errands near the Champs-Élysées.

Kardashian looked like her typical, liquidly provocative self in form-fitting lime green leggings, but North, clad in a blue Pastelle jacket that her father, Kanye West, wore to the 2008 American Music Awards, stole the show. Later, the two were a bit more matchy-matchy in twin nose rings at Jean Paul Gaultier.

Together, Kardashian and Fox represent one part of Paris Haute Couture: a diligent push for sexy, minimalist bodysuits and form-fitting latex as conventional high fashion. But not everyone agrees with their mission.

In opposition to Kardashian and Fox, on the more conventional side of things, the eternally glamorous Keira Knightly sat front row at Chanel in a black, lacy halter-necked dress by the iconic couturier. Knightly represents the kind of throwback, unthreatening femininity that couture houses will likely never give up on completely; there’s nothing alien or aloof about Knightly.

“lost my passport. got a new passport. landed at 530am. shoot at 7. show at 12. made it by the skin of my teeth,” Bella Hadid, the world’s No. 1 supermodel and a perpetual workhorse, wrote on Instagram. Naturally, Hadid accompanied the caption with a flawless carousel of herself modeling the latest alien-like Balenciaga sunglasses, crop top and ultra-baggy jeans.

Emma Watson elected for a modest, minor key ensemble: conventional skinny jeans and an oversize, nun-like blouse, but it really was the Balenciaga show that provided the most highlights.

In addition to more well-known faces like stunning Naomi Campbell, who strutted down the Balenciaga runway in a latex ballgown, up-and-comers like Selling Sunset’s Christine Quinn also modeled for the fashion house.

As The Daily Beast has noted, Quinn is currently locked in a hardcore popularity contest with fellow Sunset star Chrishell Stause, and a Balenciaga gig certainly gives Quinn enough Cool Points to take the lead.

Finally, Nicole Kidman strutted down the Balenciaga runway in a long, silver metallic dress, definitively embodying 2022’s desired aesthetic cross-section: inhuman perfection and aloof extraterrestrial sheen.

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Helen HolmesCulture Reporter

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