Lindsey Vonn has spent a career attacking finish lines. On Monday night she took on a different kind of straight line, and the Olympic champion did not miss.
Vonn walked the L’Oréal Paris catwalk for the first time at Le Défilé 2026, the brand’s ninth runway spectacular, held on September 28 at Place Joffre with the Eiffel Tower lit behind the open-air stage. The show opened Paris Fashion Week under the theme “Express Your Worth,” and it put an unusual mix of names on the same runway: Kendall Jenner opened, with Heidi Klum, Jane Fonda, Viola Davis, Eva Longoria, Cara Delevingne, Andie MacDowell and Kristen Bell also walking. Céline Dion closed the evening with a surprise performance of “I’m Alive.” Reuters described Vonn among those sashaying down the catwalk against that backdrop.
The look was athletic confidence dressed as French-girl glamour. Makeup artist Allan Avendaño built a luminous complexion with Lumi Glotion in Medium Glow, a hyaluron tinted balm, warm bronze and a soft flush, then framed the eyes in brown kohl and finished the lips in softly defined neutrals. Hair stylist Dimitris Giannetos kept the finish polished but moving. Beauty coverage singled the result out as one of the evening’s clearest American looks: glow without overconstruction.
The timing gave the walk extra weight. French reports still introduced Vonn as the Olympic alpine champion who suffered a serious crash at the most recent Winter Games. Months later she was on a public Paris runway, livestreamed on Instagram, TikTok and L’Oréal Paris’s own platforms, in a cast that also included athletes such as Marie-José Pérec and Paralympian Bebe Vio. Backstage images later placed her with Off Campus actress Mika Abdalla, another of the night’s talked-about faces.
Vonn has been on a runway before. In 2014 she walked New York Fashion Week on crutches for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign and told Today it was not her usual spiel. This was different. Le Défilé is L’Oréal Paris’s own stage, built around confidence, individuality and sisterhood, and she met it without the crutches and without looking like a guest who had wandered in from the slopes.
For a brand that says beauty does not have to look one way, an Olympic skier owning her first L’Oréal Paris catwalk was the point made in motion. She did not just appear. She nailed it.
