Long before Hugo Ekitike traded a yellow leather jacket for a Liverpool red, football’s most stylish young striker was building a career in European football that moved fast and rarely followed a straight line. The Frenchman announced himself at Stade de Reims, scoring with a precocity that turned heads across Ligue 1 and eventually earned him a move to Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2022.
That spell, however, left him underutilised and frustrated. Starts were rare, and the platform he craved simply never materialised under the weight of bigger names at the club. A loan switch to Eintracht Frankfurt in January 2024 shifted the course of his career entirely. The Bundesliga gave Ekitike a starting berth, regular minutes, and a system that made him its focal point in attack.
He scored 26 goals in 64 appearances during his 18 months in Germany, including 15 Bundesliga goals and eight assists in the 2024/25 season alone, earning a place in the Bundesliga Team of the Season. Frankfurt finished third in the table that term, securing Champions League football for the following campaign, and Ekitike drove much of that push. From Reims to the Bundesliga Team of the Season, he had grown into the kind of striker clubs pay serious money for.
That combination of goalscoring form and a genuine eye for fashion came together most sharply in Paris this week, when Ekitike walked into Balenciaga’s Winter 2026 show and sat down front row, and watching him there, it was clear he did not arrive simply to be seen. He steps out of a black Mercedes-Benz wearing a bold chartreuse yellow Balenciaga leather bomber jacket, a loud and deliberate choice that takes real confidence to pull off without looking like a misstep.
Underneath it, a crisp white dress shirt pairs with a slim black tie, worn slightly loose, lending the whole outfit a casually formal edge. Light blue baggy denim jeans and black shoes anchor the silhouette below, completing a look that moves between streetwear and tailoring without committing fully to either. His bleached blonde curly hair makes the whole package feel intentional rather than accidental; every element chosen with purpose.
Inside the show, the lighting shifts the jacket into a warmer mustard tone, and he now sits in grey-beige tailored trousers, still in that same white shirt and black tie combination, relaxed and at ease beside the most powerful person in fashion. That woman, seated to his right, is Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue since 1988, the person who has shaped global style for nearly four decades, instantly recognisable through her signature blunt blonde bob and oversized black sunglasses, dressed in a sleek black leather ensemble with a jewelled necklace catching the light.
Hugo Ekitike sat front row next to Anna Wintour at Paris Fashion Week. pic.twitter.com/NxDGTy7mGd
— VERSUS (@vsrsus) March 9, 2026
Ekitike, sitting alongside Wintour, unhurried and genuinely at home in the environment, says something real about where this 23-year-old has arrived; not just as a footballer, but as a public figure with a presence that travels well beyond the pitch.
Anna Wintour controls the fashion industry more completely than any editor, designer, or brand on earth. One word of approval from her makes a career; the absence of it often does the opposite. She has run American Vogue since 1988, building it into the publication that everyone else in fashion measures themselves against.
She decides what goes on its cover, who gets a seat at the Met Gala, and which designers get taken seriously on a global stage. Major luxury houses adjust their strategies around her preferences before collections go public. Celebrities take her seriously in a way they take almost nobody else. At 74, after nearly four decades at the centre of global fashion, nobody has come close to replacing her.
Hugo Ekitike sat front row next to Anna Wintour at Paris Fashion Week. pic.twitter.com/NxDGTy7mGd
— VERSUS (@vsrsus) March 9, 2026
At Liverpool in 2025/26, Ekitike has made 26 Premier League appearances, contributing 11 goals and four assists across 1,769 minutes of league football. In the Champions League, he has featured eight times, adding two goals and one assist in 545 minutes. A striker who arrived at Anfield for a fee of up to €95 million, with an €80 million initial payment, Ekitike has backed that valuation up with regular returns, already ranking fifth in the Premier League for total goals this season. Whether under the floodlights at Anfield or the front-row lights at Balenciaga, he handles both without flinching.
