Paris Trend: Lily Collins’s Heels
Marie Claire highlights Lily Collins wearing a Balenciaga cut‑out dress paired with a high‑vamp heel, framing that heel silhouette—first seen at Paris Fashion Week—as a retail‑friendly 2026 shoe signal (marieclaire.com). The write‑up explicitly traces the shoe trend from Paris runway showings into celebrity street and red‑carpet styling (marieclaire.com).
Lily Collins just gave a runway shoe shape a red-carpet test: the high-vamp heel showed up with her Balenciaga look at PaleyFest in Los Angeles on April 10. (marieclaire.com) Marie Claire reported that Collins wore Balenciaga’s black Duchesse Leather Pumps, priced at $1,190, with a deep red velvet cut-out dress from the house’s Winter 2026 collection. The event was the Emily in Paris panel at PaleyFest LA, scheduled for April 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Dolby Theatre. (marieclaire.com) (paleycenter.org) The shoe’s defining detail is coverage: a high-vamp heel rises farther up the top of the foot than a classic pump or strappy sandal. Marie Claire has separately traced the same “extended upper” idea in flats, saying high-vamp styles made their strongest case during the Spring 2026 fashion week circuit. (marieclaire.com) That matters in fashion terms because Collins was not wearing an isolated one-off. Marie Claire said her dress first appeared on Balenciaga’s Paris Fashion Week runway on March 7, 2026, and described her as one of the first people to wear the look off the catwalk. (marieclaire.com) The Balenciaga collection came during a transition period for the house. Who What Wear reported that Pierpaolo Piccioli presented his sophomore Balenciaga collection in Paris in March 2026, mixing formal gowns and body-conscious draping with more casual pieces tied to the brand’s recent past. (whowhatwear.com) High-vamp shoes have been moving through fashion in stages rather than all at once. Marie Claire wrote in January that high-vamp flats had already spread from runways to celebrity wardrobes, citing Toteme, Akris, Jil Sander, Gigi Hadid, and Kendall Jenner. (marieclaire.com) Collins’s appearance pushes that same line into eveningwear. Instead of pairing a cut-out dress with a barely-there sandal, she wore a more covered pointed pump, which keeps the foot line sleek and makes the shoe read closer to the dress than to jewelry. (marieclaire.com) The timing also helps explain why editors are treating the shape as a 2026 retail signal. A runway debut on March 7 was followed by a celebrity wear-on April 10, compressing the usual gap between Paris show styling and a widely photographed public appearance. (marieclaire.com) (whowhatwear.com) For shoppers, the takeaway is less about Collins specifically than about silhouette. After years of sandals, ballet flats, and exposed-foot evening shoes, more-closed, higher-cut footwear is now showing up in both flat and heeled versions from runway to celebrity dressing. (marieclaire.com 1) (marieclaire.com 2)
