Rich people are killing it this month. How can they flex their wealth? Let us count the ways.
First, we must turn to Florida. The Kennedy Space Center in Miami served as the launch site for Elon Musk to blast Jeff Koons sculptures to the moon on one of his SpaceX rockets. The rocket also carried a stereo camera and radio receiver for NASA, but the point is that Koons can boast of being the first artist to drop “authorized art” on the moon.
Next, let’s turn to newly minted Florida Man Jeff Bezos. He decided to move to Florida from Washington State after it imposed a 7 percent tax on capital gains in 2022. He refrained from selling his Amazon stock in 2022 and 2023, but now that he’s a Florida Man, he’s selling again. A recent SEC filing reveals his plan to sell 50 million shares by early next year, saving him around $600 million in taxes.
Those are two ways to be rich — blast some of the world’s most expensive art into space for shits and giggles, move states and hang onto $600 million. For a third option, we have the Kardashians, who are worth billions, but still hustling for every possible dollar. One of the most viral fashion stories of the week wasn’t from the runways — it was from Kardashian Kloset, the Kardashians’ resale site. This Page Six headline has been living rent-free in my head all week: “Kim Kardashian roasted for selling her ‘dirty’ Birkin bag for $70K: ‘How desperate are they for money?’”
Despite fronting a plethora of their own brands — including Skims, which is valued at $4 billion — the Kloset site has continued to operate, allowing anyone the opportunity to buy Kardashian-Jenner castoffs, including worn thong swimsuits. The site’s “About” page says (emphasis mine):
These pieces have been hand-selected by each family member and are available exclusively for the public to purchase.
Our goal at Kardashian Kloset is to share a part of the Kardashian Jenner family lifestyle by offering you the opportunity to own one of a kind items, while promoting sustainability.
What Back Row’s paid subscribers got this week:
The $70k bag is a gray alligator Birkin with discoloration. It doesn’t come with a certificate. A Reddit user posted about the bag, writing, “Seriously how desperate are they for money? And why does no one find it strange that these 'billionaires' are selling their second hand clothes? 😭”
Commenters wondered why the bag wasn’t restored by Hermès before being sold on the site and if the discoloration was self tanner. Another wrote, “Imagine being rich enough to spend $70K on a bag. A BAG. SINGULAR. Does she forget who her audience is?”
Kim Kardashian got her start by mastering the big wide world of mark-ups. In a 2015 Variety interview, she recalled how when she was younger, she loved shopping and eBay, and her dad gave her money to buy five pairs of Manolo Blahniks to hawk on the site. Jennifer Lopez had just worn the same style in a music video, and she was able to sell each $700 pair for $2,500. She said, “I became so obsessed with seeing that return, I would sell off the things I wouldn’t be wearing.”
But now, she’s one of the most famous women in the world, a mother of four, the founder of Skims and SKKN, the co-founder of SKKY private equity firm, the face of multiple fashion campaigns, and the star of a reality television show. So why keep the rinky dink Kloset open? Maybe it’s nostalgia for her humble beginnings when she was just that girl who loved eBay and sometimes stood next to Paris Hilton. Maybe they really want to see the public in bright purple ruched pants and the public’s children in Burbery plaid jackets and shorts as a means of asserting their own style superiority. Maybe the dirty bag was a PR plant to distract from the Kim Kardashian game shutting down after a decade.
Or maybe this family really can’t leave a single dollar on the table. Whatever it is, it seems odd in 2024 that they or anyone on their payroll would take the time to sell toddler Melissas for $40, plus $15 in shipping and handling fees. It’s not like this family hasn’t closed business ventures — the internet is strewn with lists of them. But I’m not a billionaire, what do I know?
Speaking of money — let’s take a look at what those who have lots of it might be wearing from the Milan runways.
Loose Threads from Milan Fashion Week and Beyond
If you were looking for a physical runway that found a new way to be rich, step right up to Prada. You have to watch the video of the show to appreciate it, but models walked on what was essentially a giant glass-enclosed terrarium — and it was stunning, somehow really selling me bags I don’t want and skirts that have ruffles on the butt like toddler swimsuits.
The entire Max Mara collection was gorgeous — but the brand is being targeted for selling fur. The Humane Society, LAV, and Fur Free Alliance flew a hot air balloon over the brand’s HQ in Reggio Emilia, Italy the day of the show to demand it stop using fur.
Fendi had some truly perplexing styling, including strange turtleneck contraptions that covered one arm and seemed not to have any sleeves, and exposed crotch buttons.
Diesel has gotten a lot of attention for livestreaming the preparations leading up to its show. Designer Glenn Martens said, “We are always trying to be alternative in the industry. We belong in Fashion Week, but we are not a classic luxury brand; we are all about lifestyles. And we are about our communities and our friends and our families—so let’s try and bring them in.” This explains why 100 people were selected to Zoom into the show and displayed on screens close to the physical audience. Vogue’s Luke Leitch writes, “…Zoomers who had registered to participate thus in the show included someone in an alien suit who was suspiciously on-brand in a big-D Diesel hat, someone whose monumental embonpoint filled their screen, and another regrettably less focused dog.” It almost makes you wonder if the brand is trying to distract from the clothes on purpose.
LVMH is starting an entertainment division called 22 Montaigne which will try to turn its 70 brands into film, television, and audio projects. “The new venture was created in partnership with Superconnector Studios and its co-founders Jae Goodman and John Kaplan, who come from marketing backgrounds,” Women’s Wear Daily reports. When celebrities are creating their own documentaries, blatantly stripping the medium of objectivity, it makes sense that brands would try to do the same. While it may not be a big deal if David Beckham’s self-produced docuseries glosses over some of his low points as a public figure, a corporation funneling rose-colored histories of its brands into streaming services seems less trivial. This is how we will get more shows like The New Look, which portrays Coco Chanel as someone who had no choice but to help the Nazis despite her esteemed biographer Rhonda Garelick concluding that she probably sided with them, fueled in part by antisemitism.
Blake Lively’s Super Bowl tracksuit bottoms were shoes and pants combined, she revealed on Instagram. (Is the technical term “shants”?) The best comment came from Cat Quinn, who said, “Omg so if your feet start to hurt you have to take off your pants?!”
Tyler the Creator is doing a Louis Vuitton capsule collection, reports Dazed, which will include a €68,000 ($73,500) version of the Courrier Lozine 110 trunk. If you can’t afford that one, maybe you can budget for the regular one, which only costs $46,500.
The Devil Wears Prada musical will open in London’s West End October 24, with Vanessa Williams playing Miranda Priestly. Changes have been made since the show’s panned run in Chicago, which the New York Times called “deeply corny” and Theater Mania called “mundane” and “uninspired.”
Are you following the runway shows? What do you think so far?
As someone who's main side hobby is thrifting (both buying and selling), I really don't see any issue with the rich and famous putting their secondhand goods back on the market. It's better than them tossing them or having them just sit in storage. And it is certainly not just the Kardashian's who are in on the trend of reselling their goods. Jessica Chastain, for example, just had a collab with Vestiaire Collective to resell items she wore on the red carpet. The collab was highly successful and didn't seem to produce any backlash. That being said, the VC-Jessica collab was to raise money for charity, and it appears that all the items were in near mint condition. Perhaps what feels off about the Kardashian Kloset (on top of the general stupidity of the name) is not that they are reselling used goods, it is that not even a percent of the returns are being donated to a good cause, which is the course most celebrities take. Whoever is running Kardashian PR missed the ball on that one. Finally, I just want to point out that there are some genuine vintage gems on the site. The vintage silk Christian Lacroix gown in purple from the 1980s is goregous and if I had 3.5 thousand to blow and a red carpet to attend, I would scoop that baby up so fast.
It’s this line for me “These pieces have been hand-selected by each family member and are available exclusively for the public to purchase.” How is it both exclusive and public?? 🤔