When news that Kim Kardashian had been robbed at gunpoint broke on Sunday night, some Twitter users characteristically went to the darkest and snarkiest places they could imagine: rude jokes, dismissals, condescending admonishments. But for all the stupid quips on the Tweet feed, none were as rude or pointed as the comments that anonymous fashion editors and writers—people who operate in relative proximity to Kardashian, as opposed to random strangers on the internet—made to Pret-a-Reporter.
The fashion arm of the Hollywood Reporter was, like Kardashian, in Paris for Fashion Week, and after news of her misfortune hit the shows, two Pret-a-Reporter journalists crowded outside the hotel in the 8th arrondissement where she was robbed. The comments they recorded, all unattributed but for nationalities and industry positions (a “British journalist,” an “American fashion editor,” an “American magazine contributor,” and so on) ranged from glib and cagey to outright cruel, showing not just disdain for Kardashian’s presence in social media but for the fame and hubbub her presence brings to the Paris shows.
“She sat right across from me at the Givenchy show and there were guys coming up and taking photos of her and people taking pictures of her. It felt really kind of exposed. If there had been a shooting at a fashion show, I wouldn’t have been surprised because the whole situation felt sort of out of control,” said a British newspaper editor.
“The whole scene that follows her around fashion shows is of her own making. If she didn’t have that scene her business plan would fall apart. Her wealth is predicated on it,” added an American journalist. “I’m sure she’s going to turn up at another show.”
As Pret notes, Kardashian flew home today from a private airport after what was surely a traumatic experience—she reportedly thought she would be raped, and begged for her life by telling her assailants that she had two children at home.
While some details of the incident had likely not broken yet when Pret’s journalists filed their report, the comments made by fashion insiders illustrate a disdain for her celebrity that goes beyond rationality. Of course she is Instagramming and Snapping so much of her life as an extension of her brand—and if the populace didn’t want to see her, it wouldn’t work—but to imply that by doing so she not only risked but was inviting assault and robbery (less than a week after she was assaulted by another man in Milan), is cruelty in the highest order. Certainly not very many of us can truly relate to the high-profile, lavishly wealthy lifestyle of the Kardashians, and many of us may not even like them very much at all, but to be callous about the kind of trauma she must have gone through is something like inhumane.
More flip remarks are here at Pret-a-Reporter.
