BLACKPINK Fans Fume After Rosé 'Iced Out' by Charli XCX, Zoe Kravitz, and Hailey Bieber at Fashion Show

Paris Fashion Week's Saint Laurent front row on 29 September 2025 became the centre of an online firestorm after a group image posted by ELLE UK omitted Rosé and a separate photo shared by Charli XCX showed her in heavy shadow, prompting fans to accuse the magazine and some attendees of a deliberate snub.

Rosé, who serves as a global ambassador for Yves Saint Laurent, sat beside Hailey Bieber, Zoë Kravitz, and Charli XCX at the show; Getty and W magazine published the full image showing all four together.

What began as an apparent cropping decision by a major fashion title quickly escalated into accusations about representation, with supporters of Rosé demanding explanations from outlets and influencers who amplified the edited images.

The row has been amplified by video footage from the front row and by rapid reposting across Instagram, X, and YouTube, feeding a wider conversation about who gets visibility in Western fashion coverage.

What Happened at The Saint Laurent Show

Saint Laurent presented its Spring/Summer 2026 collection beneath the Eiffel Tower on 29 September 2025, a spectacle that drew a constellation of celebrities to the front row.

Photographers from Getty and features from W Magazine captured Rosé seated with Hailey Bieber, Zoë Kravitz, and Charli XCX, an image subsequently used widely by international outlets.

Minutes later, ELLE UK shared a cropped version of the same photograph on its social channels that omitted Rosé entirely, showing only Bieber, Kravitz, and Charli; other outlets retained the full frame. That selective edit is the first documented flashpoint in the dispute.

The Social Media Storm: Cropped Photos and Shadowed Snaps

The cropping itself triggered instant backlash from fans who asked bluntly, 'Where's Rosé?' under ELLE UK's post and across X (formerly Twitter). The post's comments quickly filled with questions about the decision to exclude the brand's own ambassador from a front-row image.

The controversy deepened when Charli XCX shared her own Instagram photo dump from the same evening in which Rosé appears at the edge of a frame and noticeably darker than the other sitters. That image circulated widely, prompting commentators to frame the two social posts as part of a pattern rather than an isolated cropping error.

Fan Backlash and the Question of Representation

Fans of Rosé, many of them in South Korea and throughout Asia, rapidly labelled the omission and the shadowed image as more than sloppy editing, calling it 'ambassador passing' and raising the term 'racism' in large numbers of replies and reposts.

The reaction was not limited to casual users: several regional news sites and culture pages documented the outrage and compared the ELLE UK post to the uncropped originals.

Online outrage also focused on body language captured in video clips from the show; a short clip circulated showing Charli XCX turning away in conversation while Rosé sits nearby, which critics said reinforced the sense of exclusion.

Observers cautioned against reading intent into single frames but acknowledged that, combined, the images and clips had formed a damaging narrative for readers and fans.

By the time the story spread beyond fan communities, ELLE UK, according to entertainment and K-pop outlets, posted a separate image that included Rosé, a move many saw as a corrective after the backlash; coverage noted, however, that some readers found the action too little, too late.

Charli XCX later uploaded additional, lighter images from the evening, which included Rosé, but the sequence of posts left questions about editorial choices and influencer responsibility.

The incident has fed into a longer-running debate about the representation of Asian artists in Western fashion media and about the power dynamics of who is framed, cropped, or amplified in a globalised celebrity economy.