Lindsay Lohan

It’s Paris fashion week, and so far one of the biggest news items has little to do with fashion and much to do with celebrity. Lindsay Lohan, who was hired as an “artistic adviser” for Italian design house Emanuel Ungaro, presented her first collection at the Louvre, to the chagrin of style conoisseurs and struggling designers everywhere.

Largely seen as a publicity stunt for Ungaro – a brand that is rapidly fading into the background – Lohan’s collection was panned for being, well, tacky, with plenty of orange and pink, ruched orange slacks, and black, heart-shaped pasties. Guilty by association is Estrella Archs, who has designed for Prada, Christian Lacroix, Emilio Pucci, and Nina Ricci.

By way of explanation, president of Ungaro, Mounir Moufarrige, has said, “Twenty-first century muses are extroverts whose personal style and experience gives them strong creative and artistic focus.”

Even among the notoriously tough fashion crowd, fangs were out for this collection. It was only one month ago that Emanuel Ungar “hired” Lohan as as artistic adviser. Many in the fashion industry consider it a huge insult to anyone who had ever really worked in design or graduated from design school.

Then again, the fashion industry has in recent years emphasized flashy, disposable fashion over forward thinking and style. Lohan’s collection for Ungaro was no exception, with plenty of tight micro-mini dresses and emphasis on hearts as a design element. It appeared as a sequin pattern on one jacket and as cutouts on another. But it was the heart shaped pasties that were most universally panned, perhaps as a symbol of a fashion house in a desperate bid for attention from a house that has been fading from view since its founder retired back in 2004.