In the end, Kimye couldn’t outshine designers in Paris

PARIS — Forget the clothes. Paris Fashion Week was nearly hijacked by a couple of platinum blonds, as the freshly dyed locks of Kim Kardashian and Jared Leto stole the spotlight at the Balmain and Lanvin shows.

At Lanvin, Kardashian and husband, Kanye West, made their entrance from the top of the runway, walking to their seats with a hive of cameras buzzing in front of them. No matter how chic Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz’s leather harness gowns, fringe wrap skirts, print peasant dresses, bushy shearling coats and madcap hats looked on the runway, it was hard to take them seriously in such a tabloid setting.

Balmain designer Olivier Rousteing wanted to remind showgoers of France’s history of artistic freedom and celebrate Paris as a global melting pot, he wrote in the show notes.

It was a lovely sentiment that didn’t quite bear out on the runway, where the collection was more party decorations than party clothes, full of gaudy color combinations (orange, purple and green) and cartoonish silhouettes (pleated palazzo pants that squeezed all the wrong places, furs with out-to-there shoulders). It was a look only a Kardashian could love.

Belgian designer Dries Van Noten brought divadom down to size in his collection, mixing look-at-me pieces with the kind of basics a woman might already have in her wardrobe — khaki pants and cargo shorts, for example.

Designer Julien Dossena, now in his fourth season working for Paco Rabanne, showed a smart collection of updated sportswear, including plastic chain mail tops or draped knits over cool-looking denim, neoprene parkas screen-printed with urban streetscapes over metallic mesh dresses, and work wear pants and tops with utilitarian straps and pleats.

For all the celebrity sightings and front-row hoopla, it was the Rick Owens show held in an underground bunker below the Palais de Tokyo that was the most memorable from the first few days of Paris Fashion Week.