14 DAY TRIAL // The Nina Ricci show at the Paris Fashion Week the other day was momentarily interrupted by two female protesters from FEMEN. One model on the catwalk, Hollie-May Saker, says she punched one of them because she was angry to have been grabbed and manhandled.
FEMEN, from those who don’t know, hails from Ukraine and is a group that goes up against a variety of issues. FEMEN stands out for including only women, who always protest topless.
The same happened at the fashion show, when two women in just jeans and lots of body paint walked up on the catwalk and started screaming. They were eventually hauled off the catwalk and escorted outside.
Saker tells the Liverpool Echo that she was not about to let one of the protesters ruin her day completely.
“I punched her – I didn’t mean to but she grabbed my arm and I just wanted to get her off me. I was the 19th girl out of the catwalk and I could hear screaming behind me,” she says.
“The next thing I just see half-naked women with black marker pen scrawled across their bare chests and that’s when she came at me. As she grabbed my arm she lifted by skirt exposing me – I pulled my arm back with such force that I landed a punch square on her nose,” she continues.
“I was so angry but I knew I had to be professional so I carried on walking with a bit of sassiness. My Scouseness came out a bit but I wish it had come out a bit more. Thinking about it now I wish I’d pushed them both off the stage because they ruined my favorite show,” the model adds.
According to the Daily Mail, she also tweeted an explanation for why she punched the protester, saying she felt she was defending herself by so doing.
Here’s the thing though: below is a video of the exact moment when the women came rushing on the catwalk. You can see one of them grabbing a passing model by the hand and lifting her arm up, so it’s safe to assume the model is Hollie-May.
However, she simply gets her arm free and walks on, without as much as touching the protester, so either she lied on Twitter and in the interview, or the FEMEN girls actually interrupted the show twice.
Useless to say, *certain discretion is recommended when watching the video because it contains images that might offend.
