Kim Kardashian’s Style Is a Hot Mess

THE LIBRARY IS OPEN, and I am ready to read Kim Kardashian to filth. Now, before you tell me to keep my voice down, allow me to clarify that I don’t JUST hate her for being famous for the wrong reasons or for how she outrageously flaunts her wealth (although that is reason enough). My hate for her lies deeply in her sense of style. Despite Kim’s lavish lifestyle, she manages to cheapen everything she touches due to her lack of understanding of and connection to what she wears. So, instead of biting my tongue and scrolling past another picture of Kim in a latex outfit, I’ve decided to break my silence.

Explaining Kim’s fashion sense is like experiencing an itch I can’t scratch. She mixes and matches carelessly—from Barbie to baddie core and everything in between—similar to a kid playing dress-up. And also like a child, Kim doesn’t make style decisions for herself. When she’s not shaping her ensembles around whatever she’s being paid to advertise (I’m not here for a blatant #AD), she lets her romantic partners (cough, Kanye) choose clothing for her and, by default, control her. She has said before that when she and Kanye were married, she’d ask for his opinion about everything, putting HIS preferences above her own. I don’t know what’s worse—how Kanye used Kim as an accessory or how she just LET HIM.

Also, am I seeing double? I know hating on outfit repeaters is SO 2016—we stan sustainability!—but Kim just wears the same basic-yet-slightly-different look over and over again. Overconsumption AND ugly? Count me out! PS: Kim, stop trying to make corsets worn over bodysuits happen. It won’t!

And then there’s the cultural appropriation. Whether she’s wearing a nath (at the recent Jean Paul Gaultier show) or Fulani braids (in 2018), it seems that the only thing consistent in Kim’s repertoire is her desire to steal from other heritages. And let’s not forget the drama surrounding Kimono, the original name for what would become Skims, her shapewear brand.

So, besides enlightening you about Kim’s commodified approach to fashion, her love for gaudy garments and her track record of cultural appropriation, I wish to leave you with a final lesson. While money can buy you clothes, it can’t buy you style. What makes a person stylish is thoughtfulness, their relationship with clothing and how they use fashion as an extension of their being. And sorry, Kim—that’s not for sale. ■