Dior puts on dancing shoes to kick off Paris Fashion Week

Dance and theatricality were at the heart Paris Fashion Week's first day of spring shows, as American stars Blake Lively and Shailene Woodley gushed over Dior's balletic presentation at the famed Longchamps race-course. Gucci is holding its evening spectacle at France's answer to Studio 54, the iconic Le Palace — once the club that showcased fashion's most dramatic looks.

Here are some highlights from Monday:

DIOR'S ODE TO DANCE

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

To clouds of falling white petals, dancers clad in patterned body suits twisted gracefully to the clicking sound of a metronome.

This season, Dior turned to dance to produce the music and visuals for its spring-summer collection, infused with diaphanous, tulle-rich gowns.

The house enlisted the talents of choreographer Sharon Eyal for a sublime and balletic contemporary dance performance that ran throughout the spring-summer show.

Models wear creations for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

It had the star of "Divergent" and "Big Little Lies," Shailene Woodley, floored.

"You marry dance with fashion and movement and you have a visceral, overwhelming experience," Woodley told The Associated Press.

The runway hall was spacious enough to house the dozen roving dancers thanks to a marquee constructed in the grounds of the historic Longchamps racecourse, which dates to the 19th century and has been the site of some of former Dior designer John Galliano's most memorable couture shows.

Models wear creations for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

BALLETIC LOOKS

As ethereal as a layer of tulle, with the corset replaced by a simple tank top.

That's how the House of Dior described the key idea behind designer Maria Grazia Chiuri's soft and supple 87-piece show in monochrome and nude.

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

Few risks were taken in this display.

But this didn't matter since the fashion, inspired by a dancer's wardrobe, was primarily aimed at being simple and feminine.

Jumpsuits, straps and cords featured on silhouettes that were either tight on the torso, evoking a leotard, or diaphanous and floaty, channeling a tutu.

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

Ballet slippers evoked the dance tradition very literally, while open toe heels featured crisscross strapping in a take on a ballerina's shoe.

There was a softness to the entire show, and the dappled and misty lighting added romance.

LVMH TO REVIVE JEAN PATOU

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

France's luxury giant LVMH has told the AP it will revive the iconic fashion house of Jean Patou.

One of France's most famous couturiers in between the two World Wars, Patou was credited with popularizing the cardigan, inventing the tennis skirt and killing the flapper style. His house was most closely associated with the perfume "Joy," a rival to Chanel's No. 5 as one of the world's most popular fragrances.

For the relaunch, designer Guillaume Henry, who once revived Carven and worked recently at Nina Ricci, has been appointed as artistic director.

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

It's the latest in a series of iconic French house relaunches in recent years, including Schiaparelli, Courreges and Poiret.

JACQUEMUS

Striped bikinis and giant hessian bags provided the fun at Jacquemus' simple clothes collection.

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

It was perhaps less fun for the scantily-clad models who braved the cold September weather on the outdoor catwalk in Paris' Italian Embassy.

Loose silhouettes and large hoopla earrings gave the collection a confident swagger — a little like the 28-year-old wunderkind designer Simon Porte Jacquemus himself.

Oversized pieces of draped fabric that descended from the bust to floor, and giant skirt frills that ran diagonally down the body, provided the collection's more creative moments.

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

The collection perhaps lacked the feeling of luxury normally associated with the Paris catwalks, but it felt fresh and youthful.

Thomas Adamson is at Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

A guest arrives at Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept.24, 2018. (AP PhotoThibault Camus)

A model wears a creation for Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready to wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP PhotoChristophe Ena)

Actress Shailene Woodley leaves a photocall before Christian Dior's SpringSummer 2019 ready-to-wear fashion collection presented in Paris, Monday, Sept.24, 2018. (AP PhotoThibault Camus)

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Former Cypriot President George Vassiliou, a successful businessman who helped to energize his divided island's economy and set it on the road to European Union membership, has died. He was 94.

Vassiliou died Wednesday after being hospitalized on Jan. 6 for a respiratory infection. Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides praised Vassiliou as a leader who became synonymous with the country's economic prosperity, social progress and push toward modernization.

“Cyprus has lost a universal citizen who broadened our homeland's international imprint,” Christodoulides said in a written statement.

His wife Androulla, a lawyer who twice served as a European commissioner, posted on X in the early hours Wednesday that her companion of 59 years “slipped away quietly in our arms” in hospital.

“It's difficult to say farewell to a man who was a superb husband and father, a man full of kindness and love for the country and its people,” she wrote.

When he became president in 1988, Vassiliou lifted hopes that a peace deal with the island's breakaway Turkish Cypriots was possible after more than a decade of off-again, on-again talks. He swiftly relaunched stalled reunification negotiations with Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, but they ended at an impasse that continues today.

Cyprus was split into an internationally recognized Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974, when Turkey invaded the island after a coup aimed at uniting it with Greece. A Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence nine years later was recognized only by Turkey.

During an interview in 1989, one year into his five-year term as president, Vassiliou said: "The only dangerous thing for the Cyprus issue is to remain ... in a vacuum, forgotten and with no one taking any interest."

But Vassiliou succeeded on many other fronts, using his skills as a successful entrepreneur to modernize and expand his county’s economy, even though he had been raised by parents who were pro-communist.

Vassiliou was born in Cyprus in 1931 to two doctors who were activists and volunteered their services to the communist forces during the civil war that engulfed Greece in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

With the defeat of the communists in Greece in 1949, the Vassiliou family moved to Hungary and later Uzbekistan.

George Vassiliou initially studied medicine in Geneva and Vienna, but he later switched to economics, earning a doctorate from the University of Economics in Budapest.

After a brief stint doing marketing in London, Vassiliou returned to Cyprus in 1962, and he began a successful business career that made him a millionaire. He founded the Middle East Market Research Bureau, a consultancy business that grew to have offices in 30 countries in the Middle East, South Africa, eastern and central Europe.

In 1987, Vassilou was elected president of Cyprus as an independent entrepreneur who also was supported by the island's powerful communist party AKEL, which his father had one been a prominent member of.

Vassiliou bucked the staid political culture of the time by making the presidency more accessible to the public and visiting government offices and schools. That prompted some criticism that he was turning the presidency into a marketing pulpit.

"I consider it the president’s obligation to come in contact with the civil service," Vassiliou told Greek state TV. "I call this communication with youth. Some call it marketing. ... I call it the proper execution of the president's mission."

He also pushed through key reforms, including imposing a sales tax while slashing income taxes, streamlining a cumbersome civil service, establishing the first Cyprus university, and abolishing a state monopoly in electronic media. To make sure the world better understood the Cyprus peace process, he widely expanded a network of press offices at Cypriot diplomatic missions.

Through his tenure, the island's per capita gross domestic product almost doubled, culminating in possibly his most notable achievement as president — applying for full membership to the European Union, a goal achieved 13 years later.

Vassiliou lost the presidency in 1993 to Glafcos Clerides, who appointed his rival as Cyprus' chief negotiator with the EU in 1998. A decade later, Vassiliou headed a Greek Cypriot team negotiating EU matters during reunification talks. He remained politically active, founding a party of his own and being elected to the Cypriot legislature in 1996.

He authored several books on EU issues and Cypriot politics; was a member of several international bodies, including the Shimon Peres Institute of Peace; and received honors and decorations from countries such as France, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Egypt.

Apart from his wife, Vassiliou is also survived by two daughters and a son.

FILE -Democratic Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton, left, meets with President George Vassiliou of Cyprus at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Aug. 9, 1992. (AP Photo/Mario Cabrera, File)

FILE -Cyprus President George Vassiliou, left, smiles as his son Evelthon, 17, is introduced to the daughter of Massachusetts Governor and Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, Kara, 19, at the Statehouse in Boston on Aug. 3, 1988 as Dukakis, second from right looks on, during a visit by the Cyprus President to Boston. (AP Photo/Carol Francavilla, File)