Designers look to impress at Rwanda Fashion Week

While Iran continues to make progress enriching uranium, nuclear diplomacy seems to be stalled. Experts say the ball is clearly in the West's court.

Models walk the runway with the Eiffel Tower in the background as Yves Saint Laurent's live show returns to the Paris Fashion Week. The live shows follow similiar returns at London, Milan and New York fashion weeks this year, after much of the designer world moved online last year thanks to Covid.

After 18 months of mostly online shows, Paris Fashion Week is back with models, designers, celebrities and fashionistas flocking to in-person shows. Fashion writer Alice Pfeiffer talks about the post-pandemic era of fashion; the radical change at Dior, one of France's oldest brands; plus her favourite show so far: Charles de Vilmorin's first collection as creative director of Rochas.

Dubai's Expo-2020 opens for visitors, during which the United Arab Emirates hopes to welcome about 25 million guests, as it is considered the first universal exhibition held in the Middle East and the largest event globally since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Peter Nygard, one of one of Canada's wealthiest people, could face sex-trafficking charges in the US. Canadian authorities, meanwhile, are now adding separate charges of their own.

Climate activists burst onto the catwalk brandishing banners reading "Overconsumption = extinction" at Louis Vuitton's Paris Fashion Week show. Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth and Youth For Climate said in a statement that around 30 people were involved in planning the protest, with two arrested. They called on the government to enforce "an immediate cut in production levels in the sector, given that 42 items of clothing were sold per person in France in 2019".

From luxury boutiques to royal wedding favours, jute is growing in popularity worldwide as demand for alternatives to plastic soars. At a colonial-era jute mill in India's West Bengal state, hundreds of workers labour in a vast hall covered in fine dust, but the environment-friendly fibre is hanging by a thread in India, the world's biggest producer, despite recent efforts to revive the industry.

Top Taiwanese designers showcase their spring-summer collection at the opening show of Taipei Fashion Week. The event is organised and sponsored by the government to help promote local designers.

Dresses, purses, and heart-shaped glasses, among other objects belonging to the cherished British singer Amy Winehouse, are displayed at New York City’s Hard Rock Cafe, as seen on Monday, before going under the hammer at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills. Over 800 personal effects of the Grammy-winning diva will be auctioned, including the dress she wore during her last performance in Belgrade before her death in 2011. That dress is a really iconic design by her friend Naomi Parry and is estimated to range between 15 to 20 thousand," said Executive Director of Julien's Auctions Martin J. Nolan.

In a hot and stuffy room at her house in Hanoi, Tran Thanh Thuc holds up a delicate silk scarf and begins snipping it into tiny pieces, ready to paste onto her works of art. For four decades, Thuc has been recreating Vietnamese landscapes using vibrant shades of fabric cut from scarves, traditional ao dai -- or whatever material she could find during years of poverty in the 1980s.

Between the frenzied rush of wardrobe changes and photographers readying for shoots, Iman Eldeeb's agency is slowly breaking new ground for Egypt's fashion scene by hiring a diverse line-up of models.

Ghana's smock garment used to be reserved for royal use. These days, a flood of imported yarn has opened the market to near universal use, and the smock has become a Ghanaian clothing icon. Yet the country's collapsed cotton industry has left the financial fortunes of weavers and smock makers hanging by a thread.