EDITOR’S NOTE: Featuring the nice, the unhealthy and the ugly, ‘Look of the Week’ is an everyday sequence devoted to unpacking essentially the most talked about outfit of the final seven days.
In entrance of the Louvre Pyramid, Eileen Gu stepped out this week sporting a set of diaphanous wings — a becoming ensemble for an Olympic athlete whose sport sends her airborne. Gu attended the museum’s second annual fundraiser, Le Grand Dîner du Louvre, timed to Paris Fashion Week, buying and selling out her ski go well with for couture lower than two weeks after taking house three medals at the 2026 Winter Games.
The peach-plum gradient gown is the creation of Dutch clothier Iris van Herpen, whose high-fantasy sculptural robes emphasize motion and eye-tricking kind, usually to gravity-defying impact.
When van Herpen created the garment for her couture assortment “Sympoiesis,” proven final summer season in Paris, she possible wasn’t serious about the Louvre’s artwork trove; the gathering was extra based mostly across the fragile relationship between ecology and know-how (together with one gown that included glowing bioluminescent algae). But Gu’s rippling halter gown, adorned with two weightless wings, discovered a reference to one of many museum’s most well-known sculptures: the goddess Nike because the Winged Victory of Samothrace, presiding over a grand staircase.
“I suppose life does imitate art,” Gu stated in an Instagram post following the occasion, with van Herpen chiming in: “It was moving to see you in dialogue with the Winged Victory sculpture, two embodiments of female strength and grace across time.”
Le Grand Dîner did have a theme — Le Louvre, la nuit, or The Louvre, by evening — in addition to a visitor checklist that included Diane Kruger (additionally in Iris van Herpen), Anya-Taylor Joy, Alexa Chung and Love Island’s Olandria Carthen. But Le Grand Dîner doesn’t — but — entail the spectacle of the Met Gala in New York City, the place A-List celebrities (however principally their stylists) try to unravel the yr’s thematic costume code in essentially the most social media-grabbing means. Still, Gu’s interpretive garment could also be an early indicator of how Met Gala company will arrive on the primary Monday of May; in any case, this yr’s theme is Fashion is Art, and a few will undoubtedly take direct inspiration from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s huge assortment.
Gu’s look additionally continues her streak of trend week (and adjoining) appearances, following her arrival at Prada’s show in Milan final week alongside WNBA star Caitlin Clark. It’s a well-trodden path from Olympic podium to runway, as gymnasts Suni Lee and Jordan Chiles made a number of New York Fashion Week appearances following the 2024 Summer Games, and Chiles and sprinter Noah Lyles each made their runway debuts for Kim Shui and Willy Chavarria, respectively.
Over the previous few years, trend designers have eagerly courted prime athletes, and Gu has been emblematic of that shift since rising to sports activities superstardom, with luxurious campaigns, trend editorials and an in depth relationship with Louis Vuitton that included her runway debut at the model’s 2023 Cruise present. She’s stated that sports and fashion aren’t dissimilar, and although she’s labored with a spate of luxurious manufacturers and designers, in van Herpen she’s discovered a visionary additionally dedicated to pushing the boundaries of physics.