Paris Hilton Just Went Brunette — & Now We’re Questioning Everything

Reflecting on the mind-boggling fact that more than a decade has passed since the final episode of The Simple Life aired on August 5, 2007, is all but guaranteed to make you feel over the hill, but there’s at least one person who’s hardly aged in the ten years since: Paris Hilton.

The hotel heiress-turned-reality TV star-turned-DJ has looked more or less the same since the last time she set foot on a farm. With her double-process blonde hair and flashy, diamond-encrusted lifestyle, Hilton's lasting commitment to looking as glam as possible at all times is a more reliable force in this world than our country’s democracy — or is it?

Hilton walked the runway for a good cause last night at a Paper magazine benefit for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but the outfit she wore in the show — which was pretty much just a human-sized pastel pink bow — wasn't the only thing that caught our eye. The star looked as ostentatious as ever, of course, with a tiara perched on top of her million-dollar head, but beneath that tiara lay something totally alien to the entire concept of what makes Paris Hilton Paris Hilton: brown hair.

Hilton was spotted wearing a long, dark wig out and about over the summer, but while that makeover was clearly the sort of thing she could remove and hand off to her assistant at the end of the day, this new "bronde" color seems like the real deal. What's even stranger about the change isn't just that we never thought we'd ever see Paris Hilton go brunette — it's that she now actually looks less like a comic-book iteration of the Overindulged Rich Girl character and more like a regular person in the real world... who also occasionally appears in fashion shows dressed as a human bow. Never change, Paris. Never change.