Happy 2022, It's been a FULL YEAR of being Guy Fieri Superfan and I can’t wait for what’s next! As the first issue of the new year, and as a huge thank you to all of you for your continued support in this project, the entire edition will be free this week! Please feel free to like, share, and repost, and perhaps even subscribe for full access to all upcoming issues.
xx Alexandra
The Beginner’s Guide to Divorce (and Digital Engagement).
Is it any wonder that there once was a Preppy Handbook kept in the back pocket of those coming of age in a pre-internet era and now there’s deranged celebrities creating their own social handbooks through staged paparazzi photos and shared custody of designers? No.
Few celebrities have accrued as much international fame in the 21st century as the Kardashian family. It is a family name christened in the press by scandal and solidified in popular history by scandal. Many of the events surrounding the Kardashian family from blind items, to leaked information, to influencer campaigns, to their own multi-million dollar companies can appear frantic and disconnected. However it may seem like the last minute detail does not matter, the industry behind almost every given move of any public figure is cashing in as much as the celebrities are. So when it comes to Kim Kardashian and Kanye West both almost exclusively wearing custom Balenciaga in the midst of the divorce and respective new romances, there truly is (unfortunately) more than what meets the eye.
To understand the full scope of this public strategy, it is important to rewind to Kim’s infamous divorce from then husband Chris Humphries after just 72 days of marriage. Divorce! 72 days of Marriage! Request for annulment–FRAUD!! Nothing else could have set the tabloids quite on fire in 2011 than this whirlwind alleged fake marriage and legal affair. Fast forward through her pregnancies, marriage, and style evolution with her then husband Kanye, and we have come to an extremely interesting crux in the celebrity story arc.
Kim Kardashian’s marriage to Kanye West was characterized by two features: a massive style evolution, and a gradual shift towards a more private life. B.K. (before Kanye) the Kardashian family was certainly independently famous and were loosely associated in the fashion industry as any good early 2000s socialite would be; however, they were certainly not fashion icons. The sisters were not pulling out looks and they were certainly not wearing custom couture. Kim and Kanye’s marriage timeline ran hand in hand with the rise of his brand Yeezy, and using Kim as his own personal, walking billboard quickly became a blockbuster marketing move. Regardless of the interest and passion for art and design that Kanye may have shared with his wife, Kim’s Yeezy makeover remained an ingenious marketing move to style her, step back, and let the paparazzi photos speak for themselves. It soon became a norm to see Kim and Kanye in paparazzi photos at any given location stepping out in head to toe styled looks. As Kim quickly became solidified as a fashionable icon, she began to express her personal style in more editorial and custom luxury looks such as the Schiaparelli Couture gown she wore for Christmas 2020.
While it is no one’s place to speculate what exactly what went wrong in their marriage, it is certainly important to explain why their gradual increased privacy speaks volumes toward their shared custody of Balenciaga now. Throughout their marriage and multiple difficult pregnancies, Kanye undoubtedly transformed Kim and very much so vice versa. On the season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians that aired following the 2019 Met Gala: Notes on Camp, viewers were exposed to Kanye’s resistance to the iconic custom Mugler look. He pushed for Kim to begin to ‘dress and behave’ more modestly (whatever that meant in his book).
After Kanye’s now deleted Twitter meltdown in the summer of 2020 and a few other live events where intimate family details were non-consensually revealed to the public, the Kardashian family have gone to painstaking lengths to ensure that the public perceives the divorce as nothing but amicable–despite whatever the truth may actually be. A major part of this image has been Kim’s continued vocal support of Kanye’s career and art and possibly more importantly, their newfound shared love of wearing head-to-toe Balenciaga.
Now Kanye’s relationship with Demna and Balenciaga is certainly not new, nor is Kanye plucking a random brand out of thin air; Balenciaga is undoubtedly one of the hottest tickets in Fashion Week right now. Kim’s support in this shared union of family and designer casts a smokescreen over the press to perhaps shield the more private details of the divorce to protect both herself and her children. At the People’s Choice Awards, unsurprisingly in dressed full Balenciaga, Kim went on to publicly acknowledge Kanye’s enormous continued influence in her style evolution in her acceptance speech. Additionally, nothing says everything is fine here like symbolically remarrying your ex husband for the release of his new album as the Couture Balenciaga Bride fresh off the runway. Again, it’s important to emphasize that any theory on Kim and Kanye’s current relationship with each other is merely speculation. However, the fashion to celebrity dressing pipeline is a process that is extremely contrived and certainly never by accident.
As far as Kanye’s very publicly intense whirlwind relationship with Julia Fox goes, her sudden matrix-ification cements the full power of Kanye’s influence. More specifically, Kanye is a fanatic in whatever he does and those around him will seemingly become one too. Kanye and Kim have developed perhaps the most civil shared custody of luxury Balenciaga for the purpose of a separate, but unified front; however, Kanye and Julia Fox are a great reminder that while almost everything is in fact staged, at the end of the day it can’t be taken too seriously. What Kanye wishes, Kanye, and those around him, get.
Book Club #010
A History of My Brief Body, Billy-Ray Bellcourt: (5/5)
Sometimes there’s no other way to describe something except in the most simple, colloquial terms. In this collection of nonfiction essays, the prose goes wild. Surprisingly, this book has divided friends of mine. Some find it floury and contrived, others find it a poetic account of the author’s gritty youth and experience. To summarize the content, Billy-Ray has put together a beautiful, yet brutal portrayal of his experience growing up as a queer First Nations. As his first published work to depart from poetry, this background is immediately apparent in the rhythm of the pieces.
Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: (4/5)
This is certainly not a book for those who are not already fans of the dense Russian novel. Taking place inside a cancer ward in Russia just two years after the death of Stalin, the run-down rural hospital becomes a microcosm for the rapidly changing Soviet society. Each character objectively has nothing to lose of the material world, yet the spirit of the living man remains invaluable to the artistic soul of the Russian citizen. A slow and tenuous read, but an excellent piece of literature canon to the great Eastern European writers.
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie: (3/5)
Truthfully, I’ve never seen Murder on the Orient Express all the way through. I was pleased when this was last month’s book club pick as it was a book that many read when younger and I definitely wouldn’t have picked up independently now. Like most Agatha Christie plots, And Then There Were None, was true to its traditional mystery form with an air tight plot, meticulous planning, and very pointed details. I enjoyed the book overall; it was an extremely easy and pleasant read. My only complaint also happens to be my biggest pet peeve when it comes to mystery novels: I would rather the plot come to a natural ending rather than a dedicated confession epilogue to explain every step of how the murders were possible in hindsight.
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