9-Year-Old Modeled In Paris Couture Show, Commenters Freak

The world is a big place, and though there are myriad cultures representing millions of viewpoints, it's always nice to recognize that some things are the same across all of them. In this case, it's that parents and grandparents always think their own kids are way prettier than any child model (and they're going to leave comments about it, dammit!).  A 9-year-old Chinese girl named Xiu Qiu recently walked in designer Laurence Xu's haute couture runway show in Paris, and her sweet mug has been making the rounds in Chinese media. Her appearance in the show has incited commenters to engage in the sort of "But my kid is!" and "How inappropriate!" discussions you might recognize from stories about 13-year-old Kaia Gerber or 9-year-old Kristina Pimenova. Xu himself was the only Chinese designer invited by the Chambre Syndicale to participate in the Paris Haute Couture shows, and is quickly becoming a rising star in China (he dressed megastar Fan Bing Bing in a memorable one-shouldered gown at Cannes). Qiu also walked in Xu's first couture collection last year.

Xiu Qiu — whose name means hydrangea in Chinese — isn't a professional model, and her relationship with Xu is unknown (there are plenty of commenters accusing Xu of nepotism). Other commenters are praising Qiu for her poise and grace in front of dozens of cameras and hundreds of onlookers. Considering the number of family photos we ruined around that age by picking our noses, we've got to hand it to Qiu: Girl's got willpower. We're also predicting that Western viewers could take offense at the white dress Qiu sported and the child-bride vibes you might get from the final walk she took with Xu. But, Chinese brides traditionally wear red to their weddings, while white is predominantly reserved for mourning. Given Xu's penchant for paying homage to Chinese tradition through his collections (he's known for utilizing an incredibly complicated silk-weaving process that goes back over 4,000 years to create his elaborate brocades), we're fairly sure wedding bells weren't playing in his head as he took his bow.