Paris
CNN
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Over 150 years ago, rich women from all over the world came to 7 Rue de La Paix in Paris to be dressed by couturier Charles Frederick Worth, whose eponymous fashion house, founded in 1858, continued through three generations after his death in 1895. Widely credited by historians as the “father of haute couture,” Worth was the first designer to be known by his name, and not by who wore his clothes. He gained international acclaim and shaped the way fashion was marketed and worn. His legacy is now being documented in a new exhibition, “Worth: Inventing Haute Couture,” running until September 7 at the Petit Palais art museum in Paris.

A collaboration between the Petit Palais and the Palais Galliera, it is the first retrospective of the House of Worth staged in France, and the second only in the world — the last being over 60 years ago at the Brooklyn Museum in New York — and coincides with Worth’s 200th birthday this year. The Worth family’s close ties to artists during the 19th and 20th centuries and the Petit Palais’s “flamboyant architectural testament to this period,” said the museum’s director and chief curator Annick Lemoine, made Petit Palais “the perfect setting,” she told CNN ahead of the show’s opening.

The exhibition encompasses the house’s work from its inception to the 1920s — when famous actresses and singers, such as Sarah Bernhardt, Sophie Croizette and Nellie Melba, wore its clothes on-stage and off. Also on show are art and design items that belonged to the Worth family, including a black lacquer screen by French Art Deco artist and designer Jean Dunand and a series of nude photographs of Worth’s great-grandson Jean-Charles taken by American visual artist Man Ray.

Fragrance has also been incorporated in the exhibition, where visitors can smell a recreation of “Je Reviens,” a light powdery, floral scent by Worth. While Osmothèque, the world’s largest scent archive, based in Versailles, remade the fragrance for the exhibition, the scent itself was relaunched in 2005 by perfumer Maurice Blanchet and continues to be sold. Original Worth perfume bottles designed by René Lalique are also on display.

As some of the garments are too fragile, the show will not travel internationally, said Raphaële Martin-Pigalle, chief heritage curator of the Petit Palais’s modern paintings department.

Worth was born in England in 1825, where he trained with two textile merchants before heading across the Channel to work for Maison Gagelin, a clothing store in Paris, as a salesperson and dressmaker, eventually working up to becoming a partner. He then went on to establish his fashion house — initially called Worth and Bobergh, named after himself and business partner Otto Bobergh, a Swede.

Worth decided what women would wear, not by creating new silhouettes, but by changing the business model. Today, haute couture fashion shows take place twice a year as designers present the latest styles for clients to pick from. But this wasn’t always the way.

Before Worth, “couturiers didn’t have much latitude to invent looks,” said Sophie Grossiord, Palais Galliera’s interim director and general curator in charge of the collections from the first half of the 20th century. At the time, aristocratic women brought fabric and ideas of what they wanted to wear to couturiers, who would then produce those garments. But that wasn’t how Worth operated; instead, he designed looks that customers, if interested, could buy — subsequently turning the role of the designer, as someone who would merely serve the wealthy, to one of authority whom clients would look up to and follow guidance on how to dress.

“Women come to see me to ask for my ideas, not to follow theirs,” Worth notably said to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, a literary and political periodical, in 1858.

Worth “didn’t necessarily agree with what his clients wanted,” said Grossiord. At Worth and Bobergh, the clothes were already made, but embellishments — like woven borders, lace and fake flowers — could be added. The clothing could also be modular, with interchangeable parts such as different sleeve lengths for different times of the day, as seen in the “transformation dress” from the late 1860s.

The demand for Worth’s clothes was great: During the Second French Empire from 1852 to 1870, elaborate costume balls were all the rage — and paintings shown in the Petit Palais exhibition, including Jean Béraud’s “Une Soirée” (1878), depict Worth gowns at these events.

Worth’s costumes ranged from the avant-garde — like an umbrella costume from 1925, which looks like a cross between waders and an upside-down closed umbrella — to those which referenced history, like the dress made for Madame Charles-Pierre Pecoul for Princess Sagan’s ball around 1893, modeled after a painting of the infant Margaret Theresa of Spain. The house only ever made one suit for a man outside of the family: It was for the Duke of Marlborough and the most expensive costume made.

Supporters of Worth included Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III and one of the leading trendsetters in Europe, who learned of Worth through her close friend, Princess Pauline von Metternich, and Valérie Feuillet (who was married to the writer Octave Feuillet), according to the show’s catalogue. As the French Empress threw her support behind Worth, he soon became the go-to name in fashion. “Worth is an authority,” French news magazine Le Monde Illustré wrote in 1868, describing him as “the absolute power in the world’s royalties.”

Worth’s atelier doubled from over 500 workers in the 1860s to over 1,000 in the ’70s, as he sought to cater to clients, several of whom were European royals from across France, Russia, Austria, Spain, Portugal and Sweden. Though, a majority of Worth’s business came from customers further afield, in India, Japan, Hawaii and Egypt. American high society, which included the Astor, Morgan and Vanderbilt families, also provided a large source of income — as was emphasized towards the exhibition finale, where scenes from HBO TV series “The Gilded Age” are projected. (HBO and CNN share the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.)

As the Second Empire came to an end, so did Worth and Bobergh’s partnership — the company’s founding documents say it was intended to last 12 years. There is little known about Bobergh, so the exact reasons behind his departure are unknown. But Worth carried on, with the help of his wife, Marie, and later, his sons Gaston and Jean-Philippe.

With the shift in French regime to the Third Republic, tastes changed — in fashion, crinolines were out, bustles were in. Worth adapted by bringing down the flamboyancy of his clothes. But another challenge soon emerged: In the 1890s, the US significantly raised its customs duties, creating the most consequential tariff of the 19th century and Worth’s clothes became extremely costly to export. That created an opportunity for copycats in the American market to create similar-looking pieces, for cheaper prices. “The copying phenomenon was a problem for all couturiers,” Grossiord said, noting: “the copiers pillaged their ideas.”

In response, in 1868 Worth founded the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture (it later became the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode and remains France’s governing fashion body) to protect the designs of French couture houses from copying and to promote the status of Paris as the fashion capital of the world.

Worth also established practices that are now regarded as standard in fashion, such as using live models (Worth’s wife, Marie, was his first model) and runway shows to present new collections. Worth also photographed each of his looks and registered it by name or number. All of these were efforts to reduce the forgery of his designs.

“There was a clientele we can’t even imagine,” Grossiord said, noting that while Worth’s own order books have largely disappeared, some records still exist from the early days of Louis Vuitton (whose trunks were used to transport Worth’s clothes) and Cartier (with whom the Worth family had two marriages). Among some of the most sumptuous dresses that feature in the Paris exhibition include those belonging to Countess Élisabeth Greffulhe, who was the inspiration of the Duchess of Guermantes, a character from Marcel Proust’s literary masterpiece “À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.”

Worth himself was such a grand figure that he, too, has been immortalized in fiction: In his book “La Curée” (The Kill), French novelist Émile Zola based the character Worms on Worth, calling him, “the genius tailor, before whom the Second Empire’s rulers took to their knees.” Over 100 years later, thousands continue to marvel at Worth’s clothes. His legacy lives on.

CNN
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken center stage at Russia’s Victory Day parade on Friday, surrounding himself by friendly world leaders in a highly choreographed show designed to show the Western world that Russia is far from isolated.

Watching as thousands of troops marched across Moscow’s Red Square, Putin stood next to his guest of honor, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The annual May 9 commemoration of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II is one of the most important days in Putin’s calendar, and this year marks its 80th anniversary.

Traditionally, the day has been dedicated to the estimated 25 million to 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians who died during the conflict. But since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Victory Day has become more of a propaganda exercise, with Putin framing the war against Russia’s much smaller neighbor as a continuation of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

And while celebrations were muted in the past three years, Russia has not held back this time.

Putin and Xi were joined by scores of other world leaders, most of whom had the black and orange ribbon of Saint George pinned to their lapels. Many of them have also sent troops to march in the parade, alongside Russian servicemen.

The Russian military symbol dates back to imperial times, but it has become hugely controversial in recent years, having been coopted as a sign of support for Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine. It has been banned in a number of countries.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority were all in attendance, marking a significant upgrade to last year’s guestlist which was limited to a handful of delegations from post-Soviet states, Cuba and a few other countries.

Robert Fico, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, a European Union member state, was also in Moscow on Friday. His appearance side by side with Putin was particularly significant given the EU’s tough stance against Russia over its aggression against Ukraine.

Last month, Putin declared a three-day unilateral ceasefire around the anniversary – an announcement that was promptly rejected by Ukraine.

“The Kremlin’s proposal for a three-day truce is not about peace, but about ensuring the safe conduct of the parade in Moscow. This is political manipulation,” Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, said in a statement on Thursday.

Kyiv said that if Russia wanted a truce, it should sign up to the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine has already agreed to. Russia has repeatedly refused this offer, despite multiple high-profile meetings with top US officials.

Kyiv said on Thursday that Russia had breached the ceasefire hundreds of times since it came into effect. Several civilians were killed and injured in guided bomb attacks against Ukrainian cities, Kyiv said.

Kyiv is openly indifferent to the smooth-running of Putin’s parade, saying that it “cannot be responsible for what happens on the territory of the Russian Federation” because of the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country would not be “playing games to create a pleasant atmosphere to allow for Putin’s exit from isolation on May 9.”

In the run-up to the parade, Ukraine launched several drone attacks against the Russian capital, with authorities forced to shut down all four Moscow airports on Wednesday.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also threw in some logistical complications for international parade-goers, shutting their airspaces to diplomatic planes traveling to Moscow. Several pro-Kremlin leaders were forced to reroute their journeys to Moscow to circumvent the Baltic states.

“In Latvian society, there is a clear and principled understanding that Russian propaganda and glorification of war crimes cannot be supported or encouraged … given this context, Latvia cannot grant diplomatic overflight permits for flights facilitating participation in the 9 May event,” the Latvian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, one of the leaders affected by the closures, criticized the move, saying on Wednesday that it was “extremely disruptive.”

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was also forced to re-route after the Baltic states said he wouldn’t be allowed to enter their airspace. According to Serbian media, he ended up flying via Baku in Azerbaijan.

Hong Kong
CNN
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The escalating conflict between India and Pakistan could be offering the world a first real glimpse into how advanced Chinese military technology performs against proven Western hardware – and Chinese defense stocks are already surging.

Shares of China’s AVIC Chengdu Aircraft rose 40% this week, as Pakistan claimed it used AVIC-produced J-10C jets to shoot down Indian fighter jets – including the advanced French-made Rafale – during an aerial battle on Wednesday.

India has not responded to Pakistan’s claims or acknowledged any aircraft losses. When asked about the involvement of Chinese-made jets, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday he was not familiar with the situation.

Still, as Pakistan’s primary arms supplier, China is likely watching intently to find out how its weapon systems have and potentially will perform in real combat.

A rising military superpower, China hasn’t fought a major war in more than four decades. But under leader Xi Jinping, it has raced to modernize its armed forces, pouring resources into developing sophisticated weaponry and cutting-edge technologies.

It has also extended that modernization drive to Pakistan, long hailed by Beijing as its “ironclad brother.”

Over the past five years, China has supplied 81% of Pakistan’s imported weapons, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Those exports include advanced fighter jets, missiles, radars and air-defense systems that experts say would play a pivotal role in any military conflict between Pakistan and India. Some Pakistan-made weapons have also been co-developed with Chinese firms or built with Chinese technology and expertise.

“This makes any engagement between India and Pakistan a de facto test environment for Chinese military exports,” said Sajjan Gohel, international security director at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a think tank based in London.

Chinese and Pakistani militaries have also engaged in increasingly sophisticated joint air, sea and land exercises, including combat simulations and even crew-swapping drills.

“Beijing’s long-standing support for Islamabad – through hardware, training, and now increasingly AI-enabled targeting – has quietly shifted the tactical balance,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the US-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“This isn’t just a bilateral clash anymore; it’s a glimpse of how Chinese defense exports are reshaping regional deterrence.”

That shift – brought into sharp focus by rising tensions between India and Pakistan following a tourist massacre in Kashmir – underscores a broader geopolitical realignment in the region, where China has emerged as a major challenge to American influence.

India and Pakistan have gone to war over Kashmir three times since their independence from Britain in 1947. During the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union backed India, while the United States and China supported Pakistan. Now, a new era of great-power rivalry looms over the long-running conflict between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals.

Despite its traditional policy of nonalignment, India has drawn ever closer to the US, as successive American administrations courted the rising South Asian giant as a strategic counterweight to China. India has ramped up arms purchases from America and its allies, including France and Israel, while steadily reducing its reliance on Russian weaponry.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has deepened ties with China, becoming its “all-weather strategic partner” and a key participant in Xi’s flagship global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative. According to SIPRI’s data, the US and China each supplied about one-third of Pakistan’s imported weapons in the late 2000s. But Pakistan has stopped buying American arms in recent years and increasingly filled its arsenal with Chinese weapons.

Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher in the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program, noted that while China has been an important arms supplier to Pakistan since the mid-1960s, its current dominance largely comes from stepping into a vacuum left by the US.

More than a decade ago, the US accused Pakistan of not doing enough to fight “terrorists” – including Taliban fighters – that it said were operating from or being supplied in Pakistan. Wezeman said that added to Washington’s existing frustrations over Islamabad’s nuclear program and lack of democracy.

“(The US) finally found India as an alternative partner in the region. As a result, (it) more or less cut Pakistan off from US arms,” he added. “China’s arms supply on the other hand significantly increased – one can say that China used the opportunity to show itself as the only real friend and ally of Pakistan.”

China has expressed regret over India’s military strikes against Pakistan and has called for calm and restraint. Before the latest escalation, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed support for Pakistan in a phone call with his counterpart, calling China Pakistan’s “ironclad friend.”

With Pakistan armed largely by China and India sourcing more than half of its weapons from the US and its allies, any conflict between the two neighbors could effectively be a showdown between Chinese and Western military technologies.

After weeks of rising hostilities following the killing of 26 mostly Indian tourists at the hands of militants at a scenic mountain spot in Indian-administered Kashmir, India launched missile strikes early on Wednesday morning, targeting what it said was “terrorist infrastructure” in both Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Many analysts believe the missiles and other munitions were fired by India’s French-made Rafale and Russian-made Su-30 fighter jets.

Pakistan, meanwhile, touted a great victory by its air force, claiming that five Indian fighter jets – three Rafales, a MiG-29 and a Su-30 fighter – were shot down by its J-10C fighters during an hour-long battle it claimed was fought by 125 aircraft at ranges over 160 kilometers (100 miles).

“(It) is now being characterized as the most intense air-to-air combat engagement between two nuclear-armed nations,” said Salman Ali Bettani, an international relations scholar at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. “The engagement represented a milestone in the operational use of advanced Chinese-origin systems.”

India has not acknowledged any aircraft losses, and Pakistan has yet to provide evidence to support its claims. But a French Defense Ministry source said at least one of India’s newest and most-advanced warplanes – a French-made Rafale fighter jet – was lost in the battle.

“If … confirmed, it indicates that the weapon systems at Pakistan’s disposal are, at the minimum, contemporary or current compared to what Western Europe (especially France) offers,” said Bilal Khan, founder of Toronto-based defense analysis firm Quwa Group Inc.

Despite the absence of official confirmation and hard proof, Chinese nationalists and military enthusiasts have taken to social media to celebrate what they see as a triumph for Chinese-made weapon systems.

Shares of China’s state-owned AVIC Chengdu Aircraft, the maker of Pakistan’s J-10C fighter jets, closed 17% higher on the Shenzhen exchange on Wednesday, even before Pakistan’s foreign minister claimed the jets had been used to shoot down India’s planes. Shares in the company rose an additional 20% on Thursday.

The J-10C is the latest version of China’s single-engine, multirole J-10 fighter, which entered service with the Chinese air force in the early 2000s. Featuring better weapon systems and avionics, the J-10C is classified as a 4.5-generation fighter – in the same tier as the Rafale but a rung below 5th-generation stealth jets, like China’s J-20 or the US F-35.

China delivered the first batch of the J-10CE – the export version – to Pakistan in 2022, state broadcaster CCTV reported at the time. It’s now the most advanced fighter jet in Pakistan’s arsenal, alongside the JF-17 Block III, a 4.5-generation lightweight fighter co-developed by Pakistan and China.

The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) also operates a larger fleet of American-built F-16s, one of which was used to shoot down a Soviet-designed Indian fighter jet during a flare-up in 2019.

But the PAF’s F-16s are still stuck in an early-2000s configuration – far behind the upgraded versions currently offered by the US – while the Chinese-made J-10CEs and JF-17 Block IIIs feature contemporary technologies such as active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, Khan said.

“So, the F-16s are still a major piece to any PAF-led reprisal, but not the central or indispensable one,” he said.

Senior Col. (ret) Zhou Bo, senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy in Beijing, said if Chinese-made J-10Cs were indeed used to shoot down the French-made Rafales, it would be “a tremendous boost of confidence in Chinese weapon systems.”

Zhou said it would “really raise people’s eyebrows” particularly given China has not fought a war for more than four decades. “It will potentially be a huge boost for Chinese arm sales in the international market,” he said.

The United States remains the world’s largest arms exporter, accounting for 43% of global weapons exports between 2020 and 2024, according to data from SIPRI. That’s more than four times the share of France, which ranks second, followed by Russia.

China ranks fourth, with nearly two-thirds of its arms exports going to a single country: Pakistan.

Khan, the defense analyst in Toronto, agreed the downing, if confirmed, would go a long way in promoting China’s defense industry saying there would likely be interest from “powers in the Middle East and North Africa” who typically can’t access “the most cutting-edge Western technology.”

“With Russia set back as a result of its invasion of Ukraine, I’m sure the Chinese have begun pushing hard at Moscow’s traditional markets – e.g., Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, and Sudan – to secure big-ticket sales.”

Experts in Pakistan and China say the J-10Cs deployed by the Pakistan Air Force are likely to have been paired with the PL-15, China’s most advanced air-to-air missile – which has a reported beyond-visual-range of 200-300 kilometers (120-190 miles). The known export version has a reduced range of 145 kilometers (90 miles).

Last week, amid spiraling tensions, the Pakistan Air Force released a three-minute video showcasing its warplanes. It featured the JF-17 Block III armed with PL-15 missiles, describing them as “PAF’s potent punch”.

“From China’s perspective, this is essentially a powerful advertisement,” Antony Wong Dong, a Macau-based military observer, said of the Pakistan claims.

“It will shock even countries like the United States — just how strong is its opponent, really? This is a question that all countries potentially looking to buy fighter jets, as well as China’s regional rivals, will need to seriously reconsider: how should they face this new reality?”

But some experts have expressed caution. India’s losses, if confirmed, could stem more from poor tactics and planning by the Indian Air Force than from the perceived advancements in Chinese weapons.

“If reports of India losing multiple jets holds up, it would raise serious questions about the IAF’s readiness, not just its platforms. The Rafales are modern, but warfighting is about integration, coordination, and survivability — not just headline acquisitions,” said Singleton, the analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

What’s also not known is what intelligence India had on the PL-15.

If, for instance, it believed Pakistan only possessed the shorter-range export version, Indian aircraft might have lingered in vulnerable areas.

Rules of engagement may also have prevented Indian pilots from firing first, or firing back against Pakistani aircraft, according to Fabian Hoffman, a defense policy research fellow at the University of Oslo.

In such cases, Indian misjudgments may have made the Pakistani weaponry look more effective, Hoffman wrote on his blog.

Experts also note that India’s strikes successfully hit multiple targets in Pakistan – suggesting its missiles penetrated Pakistani air defenses, which are armed with Chinese surface-to-air missiles, including the long-range HQ-9B.

“If Chinese-origin radar or missile systems failed to detect or deter Indian strikes, that’s (also) bad optics for Beijing’s arms export credibility,” said Gohel, the defense expert in London.