For the first time in Met Gala history, all of the Kardashian-Jenner sisters were invited to the prestigious fashion event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday night.
Kourtney, Kim, and Khloe Kardashian, along with Kendall and Kylie Jenner and their mother Kris Jenner all walked the carpet that draped the Met steps.
Yet, it’s still less than a decade since the family - who were once fashion pariahs - were accepted into closely-guarded sartorial circles.
The subject of how the family finally broke that style seal is touched on in a new biography of US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, titled ANNA: The Biography.
An extract of the book by Amy Odell reveals how Wintour finally embraced Kim, back when the editor made the decision to place Kim and then-husband Kanye West on the cover of an issue in 2014.
“This was a huge turning point for Anna — and for Vogue. Kardashian was, after all, a woman she had purposefully kept out of the pages of Vogue and the Met Gala for years,” Odell writes in an extract of her book obtained by Bustle.
“Anna later said of the cover choice, ‘Kim and Kanye were part of the conversation of the day, and for Vogue not to recognize that would have been a big misstep. But at the same time I knew that it would be deeply, deeply controversial and that many of our readers and our audiences would be horrified’.”
For some, it was horrifying. A 2014 article from The Cut titled “Why Are People Being Snobs About Kim Kardashian on the Cover of Vogue?” addressed the backlash the move had at the time, and noted that celebrities like Sarah Michelle Gellar announced they would be cancelling their Vogue subscription because of it. The hashtag #boycottvogue also trended on Twitter.
Fast-forward eight years and Kim now has three US Vogue covers behind her, along with numerous covers from international editions. Her supermodel sister Kendall also has several covers, and Kylie has been featured in the publication’s “73 Questions” video series.
While Vogue isn’t the be-all and end-all of fashion, Wintour has been at the helm of what or who is “in” for decades, and it is she who hand-picks who attends the Met Gala each year.
Fashion insider and former Met Gala planner, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff told Odell that: “The Kardashians had zero style, and their whole reason for who they were was nothing that tied to Vogue.”
Odell claims that, prior to Kim’s first Met Gala in 2013, representatives for the family had called and tried to get the family in. “They were of the same ilk as other banned guests in the aughts — the Hilton sisters, who to this day have never attended, and Nicole Richie (whom Anna eventually did allow in),” Odell added.
Of the decision to allow Kim to attend the Gala in 2013, Winston Wolkoff said: “At the end of the day, Vogue’s a business. I think that at a certain point you’re going to have to give in to what culture, what people want.”
While the decision to invite Kim to the Met Gala and to put her on the cover of Vogue may not have been so much as a want but more a need, it set in motion a path for the world’s most-talked about family to also become the most stylish. Noone would think twice about seeing a Kardashian-Jenner sibling on a Vogue cover now, which is why it makes sense that each sister was selected to attend this year’s Met Gala by Wintour herself.
