Key Takeaways
- A new report details how Kanye West called Anna Wintour and secured Kim Kardashian a spot as his plus-one at the 2013 Met Gala after Wintour shut her out in 2012.
- Eight months pregnant, Kardashian dominated attention in a skintight floral Givenchy look that inspired furniture memes and led Carine Roitfeld to book her for a Karl Lagerfeld-shot CR Fashion Book cover.
- West continued lobbying Wintour, and the couple landed Vogue’s April 2014 “#WORLDSMOSTTALKEDABOUTCOUPLE” cover, which became one of the magazine’s top sellers that year.
Without help from her ex-husband, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, Kim Kardashian wouldn’t have been able to walk the carpet at the 2013 Met Gala and have one of the biggest moments in the event’s history.
Ye tried to get his then-new girlfriend an invitation to the 2012 Met Gala and failed, according to The Cut, because Anna Wintour wouldn’t budge.
Writer Jonathan Van Meter, who was in Wintour's Vogue offices around that time, recalled that her "eyes rolled nearly all the way up into the back of her head at the mere mention of the Kardashians," and said the editor "refused to let Kim anywhere near the Met Ball."
The following year, the situation changed in her favor. Ye was booked to perform at the 2013 gala, and a headliner's plus-one is a harder ask to refuse. Kardashian was never formally invited, but Wintour signed off on her as the artist’s guest.
Tracy Romulus, Kardashian's longtime business partner, credits the shift in Kardashian’s image from tabloid star to fashion icon entirely to Ye.
"The fashion world didn't accept her until she went to the Met Ball with him. Kanye called Wintour; that was all him because he saw the version of her that we see,” she said. “He believed in her. He saw the beauty, he saw the elegance… where he was just, like, 'No. She's not just a reality-TV star. She's beautiful, she's amazing, she's relevant. Every designer should be dressing her.' He fought for Kim's place there."
Kardashian arrived to the Met Gala eight months pregnant in a skintight Givenchy floral print by Riccardo Tisci, with gloves and shoes cut from the same fabric. She stole the show, with comparisons linking her to furniture.
She also left with a job. Carine Roitfeld approached Kardashian at the gala and asked her to fly to Paris the next week to be shot by Karl Lagerfeld for the cover of CR Fashion Book.
Kardashian has said she was "so nervous" that night and that she "didn't know anyone & I'm sure no one wanted me there lol." She did her own lipstick, later calling the color "so off," and went home and cried. She now counts the look among her favorites.
West kept lobbying for months after the gala, telling Wintour over lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel that Kardashian was a bigger fashion influence than Michelle Obama. In October 2013, Ye told Ryan Seacrest there was "no way" she should be missing from Vogue's cover.
The couple landed the April 2014 cover under the line "#WORLDSMOSTTALKEDABOUTCOUPLE," and it became one of the magazine's top sellers of the year. Wintour used her editor's letter to answer the backlash, framing the choice as part of Vogue's tradition of putting culture-shapers on the cover and insisting it was the magazine's idea rather than something West had requested.
"He changed my life. He absolutely changed my life," Kardashian said in an excerpt from Van Meter's upcoming book, Citizen Kim: The Woman Who Created the Future. "I think he's like, 'Let me be with a reality star. No one respects it. I'm going to show you how cool it is.'"
