Paris Fashion Week: L’Oreal hosts show on Seine

As Paris Fashion Week heads toward the finish line, Sunday’s shows went up a gear as L’Oreal Paris claimed to have staged the first runway show in history on the Seine River.
The star-filled extravaganza that drew crowds and halted traffic was held on a 60-metre floating podium.

Uninvited guests clambered around barriers to get a free glimpse at Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and actress Eva Longoria who took turns as models, alongside Andie MacDowell who talked ageism.
Here are some of the day’s highlights:
L’OREAL GOES IN-SEINE

The clothes were designed by some of the great houses of Paris fashion including Balmain, AMI, Off-White, Giambattista Valli, Elie Saab.
Yet this fashion show, much like L’Oreal’s display on the Champs-Elysees last year, was always more about the show than the fashion.
A giant floating board was this season’s runway — flanked by hundreds of bubbly-sipping VIP guests on the river bank and others peering out from the deck of a specially-hired boat.
Drones, meanwhile, buzzed overhead to stream the action via social media to 30 different countries, and traffic along the Seine was halted for the duration of the spectacle.
The display began to cheers as a speedboat that splashed down the Seine docked some glamorous freight: out stepped model Doutzen Kroes.
L’Oreal ambassadors then flooded the runway.
British signer Cheryl appeared in provocative thigh-high boots and a one-shoulder split-leg minidress with reflective paillettes that sparkled in the blazing sun.
Elle Fanning smiled sweetly as she walked in a pastel shoulderless embroidered gown and bright red heels.
Meanwhile, American actress Aja Naomi King made her L’Oreal modelling debut in a draped pink number.
But the king and queen of the show had to be Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Eva Longoria.
The Desperate Housewives star stepped out in a regal, layered gunmetal mini-gown — with two-metre-long train.
Coster-Waldau, meanwhile, was all smiles but looked slightly nervous to be there modelling to the crowds in a long-tailored coat and white shoes.
“I was surprised to be doing a catwalk. I never thought I would see the day — neither did my children!” Coster-Waldau said.
Ahead of the L’Oreal show, Andie MacDowell, 60, spoke about ageism and her longevity in being a L’Oreal ambassador, a post she’d held for some three decades, and counting.
“I think the timing right now is really fiery as far as acceptance. And ageism is part of that acceptance,” the American actress said.
“I have to say you have to give L’Oreal credit for being one of the first people to take on all ages and to take on mature people like Jane Fonda, Helen Mirren and Diane Keaton... and keeping me,” she added, humbly. (Fonda and Mirren modelled in last year’s Champs-Elysees show.)
MacDowell praised the Paris cosmetics giant for being a trail-blazer when it came to “recognising that there is no expiration date on beauty.”
In “how we treat women as they get older, I think it’s important to be inclusive and also have a deep respect for them,” MacDowell added.
VALENTINO DELIGHTS
“A work in substraction,” so said the house, was the spirit behind Pierpaolo Piccioli’s accomplished — and pared down — display for Valentino.
Cactuses and cleanly shaped plants lined the foot of the runway, presumably in reference to the clean lines and minimalist styles that opened the show.
Deceptively simple black looks began the collection: a shoulderless baggy jumpsuit with cape and Elizabethan-style sleeves and a gown with an exaggerated peplum hem.
Their beauty lay in the subtlety of detail.
An unstructured minidress with giant flounce looked beautifully off-kilter as it hung delicately from the model’s shoulder, as if it could fall off at any given point.
White looks then came, and were, alongside black, a dominant theme — speaking to the ubiquitous spring-summer trend.
Artistry was plentiful in some of these white looks: gowns with delicately-pressed pleats that seemed to fan around the belly button.
But Valentino is a couture house at heart, and despite this being a ready-to-wear show, the work of the “petites mains,” or seamstresses of the age-old atelier, was on display.
An oversize, veiny wicker hat composed of billowing feather possessed a delicate organic feel, and had guests understandably reaching for their cameras.
Indian actress Freida Pinto rocked a beautifully tailored menswear jacket look on the Valentino front row — the first time she’s been seen at one of the couture house’s displays.
“I’m super excited. This is really my style. It makes me feel really comfortable,” she said.
“This is my first ever Valentino show... We’ve been trying for some time to make it work but with my schedule it’s been hard,” she added.
Pinto, who shot to fame with Slumdog Millionaire, blamed her busy schedule on several “exciting” films she’s starring in.
It includes the British-American fantasy adventure Mowgli, based on the Rudyard Kipling fable set in India, in which she plays Messua, who decides to adopt the wild Mowgli, believing that he is their long-lost son Nathoo. It also features Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett.
GIVENCHY’S SLIGHT GEOMETRY
An unfathomably long laser beam led cautious guests through the pitch black to the Givenchy show inside Paris’ storied Palace of Justice.
The historic stone building that housed Marie Antoinette in the last days before her execution still possesses an eerie quality that designer Clare Waight Keller nicely exploited in her nighttime show.
Thumping and gritty bass music creative a hard atmosphere, alongside the raw warehouse curtain decor.
The clothes themselves weren’t quite so eerie.
There was a slight hardness to the graphic quality of some geometric bodice straps, or in the interlocking V-motif on a high collared, ankle-length gown in black.
But there was much more softness among the 59 men’s and women’s styles, owing to the frequent fluttering of full silk skirts, sometimes in optical print, and the soft colours.
It’s hard to be gritty, after all, if you’re wearing a spring-like palette of light sky blue, bluebonnet, pigment and cadmium green, and corn yellow, (balanced with off-white and on-trend black).
Some of the simpler looks — such as a series of one shoulder gowns — didn’t feel like the talented British designer, alas, was pushing the envelope much this season.
But the styles ended on a high note when Waight Keller got her disco on and served up a silver, Art-Deco style column dress with armour-like shoulders.