Just B Rant: The Kardashian Kutback

I'm sick of it. My assistant said today, they're nauseating. I've had it, like people, really, the tipping point has been reached and it's hard to come back from that. Now. They're billionaires and there's no taken that away from them, and they have affected and influenced what other people have worn and done for years now, so you have to give them the credit that is due. But it brings

me to wonder what is fashion? So Anna Wintour in many ways decides what is fashion, and Anna Wintour decides how the fashion industry is going to respond to social issues. How do they respond? She's responsible. Years ago she put Madonna on the cover of Vogue when it was controversial before celebrities were really on the cover, and it was a provocative cover. And she takes chances. She plays chess,

she's a business person. I read the book written by Amy O'Dell Anna, and it was seemed like a fair take, not a hit piece, and not a glorifying piece, to seem like something to educate. And Anna started the MET Gala as a small event and it's hundreds of thousands of dollars now to get a table and to get a seat. And she decides the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the MET Gala, which is for the charity, the Costume Institute. And this Costume Institute is about is over

five continents, preserving, celebrating, honoring, acknowledging. It's about fashion. So what does fashion mean? It means in style, like if you look it up. But I think fashion has come to me in something so different and more evolved. Fashion means power, fashionist, celebrity, fashionist politics. Fashion is what you know who's in the front row of Paris Fashion Week and their influence and fashion has come to me in fame.

So Kanye, I remember when it was like crazy that he said he was going to get into fashion, and he was fashion adjacent at the time, and Anna invited him and Kim was his plus one, and she said she cried, she got laughed at. And then the next year she was invited back in her own right, and then some members of her family were invited. And last year it was a Kardashian circus. It was all the Kardashians and to honor Virgil Ablow. Kylie was wearing like a two two and a T shirt and a backwards

baseball cap. And it's become this this circus and it's the only thing you can really look at. And they throw money at fashion. Kim just bought this important piece in history, this cross. She's buying things from Elizabeth Taylor like she's spending money to be fashionable. She has stylists, she has teams, she spends millions or you know, millions is donated, But it's money that it takes to be this quote unquote fashionable. So is that what fashion is?

Is fashion? Walking up to Channel looking at the window and spending one hundred thousand dollars to buy the whole window is fashion? The house swads wearing hes and c's and f's and geez head to toe everywhere. That feels to me like being a mockery of fashion. That feels to me like the masses where a ball Maine shirt across their chest or Gucci logo everywhere, because that's what the masses get to do to make it like they're

really fashionable. And billionaires get to be rich and spend money and buy from these designers so they get to sit front row. So is fashion no longer street art? Is it not highs and lows? Is it not getting inspiration from different times in history? Is it not being a true artist? Tom Ford said he misses when the met Gala was like an affair where people got dressed up and it was elegant instead of it becoming the circus. And sometimes we watch him like, I don't we don't

understand it, like what is that? We everyone wist say, well, I mean, I maybe I don't know anything about fashion, but maybe I don't know anything about fashion. But and in the movie Devilware's Pradac Meryl Streep's character does say to Anne Hathaway's character the meaning of her bargain bin sweater and that the cerulean blue has flowed through the veins of So where does fashion start and where does

fashion end? And the Kardashians have thrown money at the fashion problem and it was never more evident than last year. So Anna Hbic of all hbics, certainly the fashion Hbic, certainly the most impactful woman in fashion history. But ultimately a businesswoman, What is Anna Wintor going to do? From a business perspective? Okay, she put Madonna on the cover. That was a business decision. She put Kanye and Kim on the cover. That was a business money making decision.

To sell. She's got to keep her job and sell magazines when magazines were dying. So now what is her decision? So what is her decision? Playing chess? But is the decision all hers? She is working for a museum. Anna has tried to renovate parts of the museum, succeeded in some cases, failed, in some cases gotten things declined that she asked for because it is in fact a museum. And what is a museum four? Preservation, preserving history, honoring history.

So what is what is the costume Institute? And fashion and these amazing pieces that people get to observe from history over five continents, it says on the Internet. So it's about preservation. So what does Kim Kardashian do Last year, goes through Ripley's Believe It or Not, throws money at the problem, gets the Marilyn Monroe dress, alters it, and allegedly destroys it. What would a true fashion person who

cares about the preservation of history say about that? Marilyn Monroe is arguably one of the most influential people in fashion history, from body type to garments, two choices. That dress is arguably the most famous dress in history because she wore it to sing Happy Birthday, mister President to j F K who was assassinated. Like, these are converging

concepts in history. So if Kim Kardashian comes in and destroys or even even alters, just benefit of the down altars an historical fashion garment and this event because people forget what the event is actually about. People forget people forget what Fashion Week is about. The event is actually about the preservation and honoring a fashion history. So if Kim Kardashian, the most famous person on that carpet, just decides to fucking alter one of the most famous dresses

in history. How do you think the costume Institute feels about that? How does the museum feel about that? Famous and rich people don't get to go to the Pyramids and take a chisel and decide they want to take a piece of the Pyramids home with them and even alter slightly a historical monument. You can't go into a museum and do anything to something that's historical. That's why things are in glass. I want to take a crayon to the Mona Lisa like. That's probably the reason. And

it's matt that Anna Wintour does. Doesn't want the follows, the likes, the views. I'm sure the Addison Rays of the world, but she has to appeal to not only the costume institute and a museum, her base, her fashion base. And maybe she squeezed the lemon and gotten all the juice out. The Kardashians are on the decline in interest. They don't have the influence they do anymore. They're famous, they're infamous. It's a circus, it's Carnivale, it's Marti Gras,

it's a costume party on Halloween. But they don't influence the same way that they used to. Not everybody now in the time of being honest and trying to be unfiltered, and that being celebrated and being real and real people are famous all over social media, not just only rich famous people get to be famous. Regular people get to be famous. They're not the people that people want to look up to. That's why they're so desperately trying to

be relevant on social media and do relatable things. So if they don't have the influence, which also equals fashion, and Wintour squeeze that lemon to get the juice out when they were at their peak, and the Costume Institute and the museum, maybe like enough and the people like Tom Ford who are true artists, like these people like you who are true artists have spoken, maybe Anna has

to respond. In history, fashion is definitely meaningful. So maybe this was the social consciousness response that Anna Wintour had to make, or maybe the Age six was wrong, But what does fashion mean to you? So Amy O'Dell wrote the book Anna, and I read it, and I've seen

her on social media and I liked it. And because this is about the hbiic and her decision, I want to get Amy O'Dell on to see what she thinks about this and if she thinks it's true, because I last night was on the phone with a billionaire person who's involved with the mechal not like in a decision making process, but they've been probably on the board, they've had the tables, they're connected, they've met Anna, they know and they said there's no way this is true, and

because they can't imagine her turning away that reach. And I said, I disagree. I think it might be true. So I think it's true. I don't know why. I just my gut says it's true. And I did have a neon science saying I know it all. But I could be wrong. So let's see what someone who actually knows something about this topic and the fashion industry and Anna actually has to say. So we're gonna bring an Amy Odell. So last night I read from page six, and I've seen that it hasn't been picked up by

like people or somebody who actually requires legitimate sources. But page six wrote that there will be a Kardashian free Mecala. And then I thought overnight about many different things. I thought number one about they have reached the tipping point, and I do see the arc because there's a trend now in being real and relatable and average people can be famous. And so that was one thread that I thought.

So I thought, like, okay, they she has gotten the juice out of the lemon, and that's let's put that. Let's park that. Another part is the fashion base, her base. You still always have to appeal to your base. So her Tom Forwards, who in your book you said that, he said he misses when it was glamorous and people just dressed elegantly, and so all the other you know, the Donna Karan, Whoever's like really true fashion. These people are your base. There's no way that they enjoy this

Kardashian circus. Okay, even if I guess if they're directly benefiting. But if you're not a sellout, I think that you're not duld Jacobana doing a full campaign in Italy, you might not enjoy this sort of desecration of whatever fashion seems to mean to them. That's number two. That's your base. And I'm going to say your basse adjacent is the Costume Institute, the actual true meaning of this event that

from my perspective, this is held in a museum. In your book, you wrote about Anna trying to change different things in the museum over the course of years and so, and her getting pushed back and often not being able to do ridiculous things that you wouldn't do in a museum.

So I would think that Marilyn Monroe, one of the most influential women in history and in fashion history and in body type history, and her most famous garment being altered and allegedly destroyed, that would make historians and people who truly have the integrity of what this event actually is, not the bullshit of celebrities getting on a red carpet, that they would be having a panic attack that a piece of history, like like me going and chiseling off a piece of the pyram Is in Egypt, as if

I can just desecrate something that is held in such high regard and represents history. So I would think adjacent to her base, the Costume Institute and the museum would be like, no, we cannot have Kim Kardashian represent and the Kardashians represent this event when this woman has not only made this circus but also like desecrated sacred fashion ground. And then third, if it's just she got it, she had to the way you wrote in your book about the Madonna cover. She put Madonna on a cover when

it was controversial. She did it, she had to. She got the sale. She's a businesswoman, so she had to sell magazines in putting Kim and Kanye on when Kanye was a fashion adjacent at the time, and she got the juice out of the lemon, and now she wants to class it up again. So these are my conspiracy theories about the mec Gala. If in fact page six is right, and if they're not, we've had a fashion conversation.

So take it away, Amy. Yeah, I think your insights are very correct, and thank you for your close reading of my book. But Anna is then a very unique position with this Macalla in particular, this is going to be a really tough year for the Macala, I predict, and that really stems from the theme which was chosen long ago, and that them as Car Lagerfeld. I don't know how much you Orfeld, but he is he is. His legacy is going to be parsed as this exhibit

opening approaches. The Mecal opens the exhibit at the Costume Institute of his work Carl Lagerfeld designed for many years for Chanel for Fendi, and he worked for other houses like Chloe, and he was one of the most influential fashion designers of his time. He was also a personal friend of Anna. I can understand why she would want to honor him in an exhibit. By the way, he never wanted to be honored in a museum exhibit, so it's kind of ironic that they're doing that. However, he

was known for making fat phobic remarks. He was known for putting on fashion shows that featured only white models. He was known for photographing Claudia Schiffer in blackface. And these controversies are coming to the four and people are going to be wondering, why Anna Winter or White Vogue,

why the Costume Institute or honoring him. I don't know this for a fact, but based on my extensive research of this event and of Anna that I put into my book and of the biography, I am guessing that part of it was that this is an exhibit that is sponsorable, right, like you're gonna honor Carl Lagerfeld, Okay, you call Chanelle, you Caul Fendi. Of course they're going

to sponsor that. It's a great marketing opportunity for them. However, the celebrities are also going to be in a difficult position because anybody who goes, and I'm sure a ton of them will go, the co chairs are really a list, Like she's got Duelipa and some other big names that that's for this year. You're saying that's been announced. Yeah,

she's a co chair. Yeah. So the celebrities who go, you know, by virtue of being there, they're going to be kind of endorsing the event, endorsing Karl Lagerfeldum, so that's gonna put I think that puts them in a difficult position because there's been so much social media conversation around Carl and his controversy whether or not this exhibition should be even happening, So it can't be the Carl

Dashian event. Yeah, So I could understand just maybe as they're going into this, if they don't want to have further controversy layered on top of what they've already got to deal with, maybe they wouldn't want the Kardashians to go, because if you think about the Kardashians, and really the tone has shifted on them since I think the pandemic it used to be Oh, you know, it's so cute that Kylie, for instance, has this huge playhouse for her daughter,

and her daughter knows she's getting a surprise and she thinks that it's a birkin and it turns out to be a playhouse. Like the tone around stuff like that, They're sort of conspicuous. Consumption was just sort of playful and like, okay, you know, people were fans of them, and that has really shifted in the culture, and a lot of wealthy people, I think, are dealing with this now after the pandemic, which really crystallized for a lot of people, like the differences between the halves and the

half not. So let's talk about fashion and money. So what I said earlier on my random what I said on TikTok is so what is fashion? You look it up. It's about style, It's about trend. Okay. So fashion has become power influence front row media, entertainment, celebrity billionaires flying jets into Paris to sit front row because ultimately the

designers are selling garment. So I understand the billionaires being there to actually buy those major costume pieces, and like, I get that, but the housewives very much by the way I noticed this with all the g's and the seas and the fs, and you know, let's drape ourselves in logos, and that means we're fashionable. Or I'm very into fashion because you're rich and you buy clothing and

you go sit front row, and to me, that's not fashionable. Okay, so to me, I listened in Deverawar's Parada about the Cerulean Blue. To me, I think fashion like food. Like food, doesn't mean buying the most expensive thing, you know, being a culinary. There are culinary treasures that Anthony Bourdain uncovered in food in markets. Fashion to me is someone who makes their own clothes or as highs and lows or street style or you know, takes from different influences, and

that to me is what is part of fashion. Fashion doesn't mean just throwing money at the problem and last and buying the Marilyn Monroe dress and buying the Elizabeth Taylor stuff and buying the cross and having a stylist and having a team and being able to pay and be rich to be fashionable. Of course, the Tiering Mugler drip lookal was amazing. If I had a team from NASA and every you know, coming descending upon me like

a NASCAR pick crew to make me fashionable. I would be fashionable, and Kylie like with the backwards hat and the big two two and the whole family in the circus. It's fashionable. But it looks to me like a rich family throwing money at the problem, Like like a rich person walking up to Chanelle seeing one hundred thousand dollars display in the window. I'll take all of it and wearing it, and someone saying, Oho, she has such great style. So that's where I talk about housewives and money and

this blatant, conspicuous, conspicuous consumption. And I ask you about that as it pertains to this possible decision and what you just said, Yeah, yeah, so yeah, the tone is shifting around all of that, right, as we all have seen and the Kardashians, everything they do in the twenty twenties or so, much of it has resulted in controversy.

And I can understand Anna Winter's desire just to remove people who she knows have a history of layering controversy onto the event, particularly when she has what could be a challenging year for this gala. So I think that it's a logic if it's true, and you know, we don't know for sure now whether they go, they go, Joy, I'll look at their outfits. But if they don't, we've had a conversation. Right. But I agree with you about

that the event is to promote the fashion industry. But I do believe that a museum is to preserve fashion. And I do think the Maryland Road thing, I think it's one big pot of soup, as you were saying, and what about all the TikTokers and that, you know, making it like a TikTok circus. So the Maryland and rothing was bad optics for sure. And that was a controversy that was so unique in my opinion, because it

dragged on for so so so long. It was like six weeks later Kim went on morning television and was still talking about it. Yeah, And so that in itself was crazy. I think the TikTokers are seen as an

extension of the Kardashian infiltration of the Gala. And as I say in my book, Anna, the Kardashians wanted to go to the MCALA for a long time, and Anna would not let them go, just as she would not she would not let Paris Hilton Go because she did not believe that their values and their images aligned with the values of Vogue that she was so it is still to this day so protective of and that image that she is so protective of. So the TikTokers are

probably an extension of that. I mean, look, as we all know, the social media conversation is kind of the whole point of all of this, right, Like the big impressions from any of these events, it's all going to be on TikTok It's going to be on Instagram. That's what That's what you kind of do You hold on an event so that you give people something to talk about on social media. Well, it bends until it breaks, and maybe she had to have them all in when

it was all cresting. But no matter what, social media will cover the met gal with or without the Kardashians or Addison Ray and so it's just an interesting conversation. So I thank you because I think that this was a great like knitting, for me and a person to talk to about something I'm not an expert on. I just had my opinion. So it'll be interesting to find out what combination of what you and I both think is the real reason or if it's all of it,

or if we're off. But I don't think that we are, and I think that we could be contributing to what happens. She could be testing the waters too, She could have had a leak to test the waters. This is a great focus group. We're talking about it and she's finding out the temperature of the room and she's learning. I learned so much about what people are saying about things. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I will say is last year's gall in particular, Kim Kardashian was the headliner. In previous years,

that has absolutely not been the case. The headliners were Beyonce, Rihanna, Yes, the AAA list, and then you had Kim Kardashian kind of being the AAA list because she was the biggest star there. And I can imagine Anna wanting to bring it back. And it wasn't just Kim Kardashian last year.

It was Kim and her whole family attending for the first time, and I thought, I thought that was really it represented to me, to be honest with you, a little bit of a decline for that to be, you know, the the top build guests that were there, the Kardashians all attending together. I do think this year I would be surprised if Kendall did not go, because she is a model, she has a lot of relationships in the industry. She's the piece of brands. I would expect to see her.

I would be surprised if she wasn't there. I would not be surprised if we didn't seek Kim, if we didn't see Kylie, Chris, Courtney, Chloe, Like, and what does that do to their relationships in fashion? What does that say they're not there? Well, to go to the mecala is really significant and one of the reasons a lot of stars want to go. For instance, it's because they get to sit next to, say, um, you know some high up executive at Loreale who might give a lucrative

contract to be the strip their campaign. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what they what they try to do. So Anna will break up everybody who goes, Like if you come with your partner, she breaks up the couples, which is typical at these old school dinner parties, right, but she'll break them up. But the whole point is so

that people can have useful business interactions. Really yeah, I love that because I that that interests me, like meaning I can say to you that I have never I talk about the mecal a lot of time because I'm always wearing pajamas and always like I don't think Anna's calling anytimes. You're just like a stupid joke, you know, like a low hanging fruit joke. But um, I have never thought to myself, oh my god, like I would

die to go. Obviously it would be amazing to see it and to see if if I if you could pull it off, and the walk and the carpet, and it seems very intimidating. But to me, the most interesting thing that I've heard about it is what you just said, Like sitting next to people influential people, but I would feel that these people already know these be like I know people from Loreal, but I guess not the head

of Loreal. And one year I went to the Vanity Fair party and it's interesting because I sat at the Cadillac table and it almost was a deal with Cadillac because it was the head people at Cadillac. So that is interesting that to me, that's made it the most interesting thing. So yeah, yeah, she wants it to be worthwhile for the people in the room. Now, I would like to go to the meal for the first time

in my life, I could say aloud. Amy O'Dell has made the mec Gala seem like something I would like to attend because of the preservation of history aspect that I've brought, and if the Maril Morow thing is true, that would make it seem like it has integrity, and because of you saying that there are different business people at the tables to talk to, because I don't care about famous fe both, but that to me sounds interesting. So I appreciate you and appreciate this. Thank you, Thank

you for having me on. Thank you and buy her book because it's really great and good luck with everything in your book is really very good, very fair. Thank you so much, Bethany awesome, have a great day. Thanks you, ar