Everything That Went Wrong For Meghan Markle At Paris Fashion Week

Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, said "bonjour" to her first-ever Paris Fashion Week in 2025. But now, she is probably looking forward to saying "au revoir" to all the hate she got along the way. There are few people who know how to get the haters riled up quite the way Meghan does. After all the time she's spent in the spotlight, one would think she would be careful about what she does in public in hopes of avoiding backlash. During her time in the Fashion Capital, however, she proved that for her, causing controversy never seems to go out of style.

Between her As Ever lifestyle brand and her Netflix show, "With Love, Meghan," it's clear that the controversial royal has been attempting a rebrand as of late. And, perhaps being regarded as a fashionista is in line with her lifestyle aficionado aspirations. Unfortunately, anything that attending Paris Fashion Week might have done for Meghan's image was overshadowed by her many moves that made for bad press.

Meghan Markle made one of the easiest PR mistakes you can make when attending Fashion Week; she picked a controversial fashion show to attend. Plenty of people think twice before supporting Balenciaga after the famed fashion house was involved in a scandal last year. In 2022, the brand launched an ad campaign that totally backfired. The advertisements featured children with stuffed animals that were clothed in bondage wear. As if that wasn't strange enough, one of the ads showed a desk that had documents regarding a U.S. Supreme Court decision about child sexual abuse sitting on it. The brand's then-creative director Demna issued an apology for the ads, writing, "It was inappropriate to have kids promote objects that had nothing to do with them," per CNN. Yet, this wasn't enough to rehabilitate the brand's image. 

Paris Fashion Week marked the debut of the brand's first collection under its new creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli. Yet, a change in the face of the brand is unlikely to entirely fix its damaged reputation. And, as someone who knows a thing or two about damaged reputations, Meghan definitely should have seen some backlash coming for her choice to attend the show. "Meghan Markle supports Balenciaga just three years after the brand sparked global outrage with its children's campaign," one user on X, formerly known as Twitter, wrote. "Scumbag," one X-user commented. "She's a hypocrite with no scruples, especially when it comes to getting attention and freebies," wrote another.

Meghan Markle got plenty of flak online for the fashion show she chose to attend, but she also managed to get criticism for how she attended it. On her way out of the show, where she sat front row, everyone was saying the same shady thing about the way Meghan strutted her stuff. Her walk was very slow and deliberate, which made it look like she may have been attempting to do her own model walk for the occasion.

"Why is she walking like that?" plenty of Instagram-users commented on a video of Meghan's unusual walk. "No one has ever [tried] harder in their life," one commenter wrote. "She is soooooo hard to watch..." added another. Some commenters guessed that Meghan would like to earn a spot on a runway one day. Based on the response her walk got, though, it's hard to imagine that a future in fashion shows is in the cards for her.

Plenty of folks made fun of the way Meghan Markle treated the sidewalk like a runway, but she also earned criticism for seemingly making fun of one of the models on the actual runway. At the Balenciaga show, one model lived what is surely one of the biggest fears among runway models: she tripped. And, as if tripping on the runway isn't bad enough, she also seemingly had a member of the royal family laughing at her. According to editor-at-large of the Mail on Sunday Charlotte Griffiths, "At one point, [Meghan] sat on the front row, and a model tripped. She burst out laughing. And then she obviously [realized] that was quite a cruel thing to do, so she sort of covered it up. She did seem a little bit out of place in Paris, if I'm going to be honest. She seemed a bit nervous," per the Daily Mail.

Surely this account of what happened would have been embarrassing enough for Meghan, but to make matters worse, the incident was caught on camera, and it made the rounds online. "What sort of person laughs at a model stumbling/falling on a Paris catwalk... A narcissist, that's who," one X-user wrote alongside the video of Meghan giggling at the runway blunder. "Wiped the smile off her face pretty quickly. Ooops wrong reaction," one commenter noted. Another called her "... a garden variety mean girl."

Evidently, Meghan Markle made more than one misstep during Paris Fashion Week. Yet, her trip also ignited a brutal internet war among royal watchers thanks to one controversial Instagram story. On October 4, Meghan shared a short video clip on social media showing her putting her feet up and relaxing while a limousine drove her through the streets of Paris. On its face, it's hard to imagine why this would have caused backlash. Yet, it was where exactly Meghan was being driven that gave folks online pause. The video was taken near where her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana, died in a car accident in 1997.

Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams understands why royal fans were disturbed by Meghan's Instagram story. "I don't understand what on earth she was thinking — well, she can't have been thinking. No adviser would ever advise doing something so strange," he told the Daily Mail. He added, "I'm sure she didn't mean to cause offense, she can't have been thinking, but it's insensitive beyond belief. It's a complete absence of thought," noting, "Diana's death is a tragedy that has scarred so much of [Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex]'s life and I can't imagine he would find this very appropriate." So, while Meghan likely didn't mean anything macabre or insensitive by her post, it's safe to say that this was another in a string of PR errors she made during her trip abroad.