Questions about Kim’s post-divorce independence have been central to The Kardashians thus far. Can Kim prove herself on live TV as a comedian? How will she style herself without Kanye? Will she really pass the “baby bar” exam and eventually become an attorney? This week, it’s a buzzy deal with Balenciaga and a futuristic Vogue cover that reflect her renewed—and, in fact, elevated—sense of agency.
Along the way, we get a glimpse inside her archival closet, which contains everything she’s ever publicly worn. Khloe debuts her sleek new house, and Kris and Kylie embark on an adventure akin to classic Keeping Up episodes in its absurdity: a day of doing “normal things.” Here are three things that kept me up after episode seven of The Kardashians.
Kris tells Kylie “you’re doing amazing sweetie” because she returned a shopping cart
While together in the car, Kylie remarks to Kris: “I think when I’m pregnant, I just want to feel really normal.” With that in mind, the duo decides to embark on an adventure Kylie compares to Disneyland: the grocery store, the gas station, and a car wash. Giddy and giggly, Kylie and Kris parade through the store, plucking Annie’s mac and cheese boxes from shelves, debating whether to buy cookie dough, and expressing exaggerated wonder about the checkout process.
Kris explains why they seldom shop for themselves these days. “One of the things that gets a little tricky is privacy,” she says. “I stopped going to the grocery store because people in the store were sneaking pictures. It was hard.” The edit cuts to a slow-mo shot highlighting a fellow shopper who’d begun discreetly filming them. It’s a moment that provides a perfect paradigm shift. We’d been experiencing the grocery store from the Jenners’ elite and disconnected vantage point, but if most of us could identify with anyone amid the spectacle, it would more likely be the everyday shopper trying to casually capture a Kardashian sighting with their phone.
In fact, it’s a little tough to tell whether those of us who still buy our own food and pump our own gas are being trolled by Kris and Kylie’s campy take on the mundane, but by the end of the scene, we’re given more clarity about their level of self-awareness. The time comes to pack the bags into the back of the Mercedes Jeep. (Kylie even exclaims, “We get to load the car!”)
“Okay,” Kris says as they finish up. “Don’t be the customer who just leaves the basket in the middle of the parking lot.” Kylie accepts the challenge, and as she journeys off to return the cart to its corral, valiant music begins playing to comedically—even self-deprecatingly—dramatize the moment. As if this conscious assertion of their own absurdity weren’t enough, next, Kris calls out the classic Kardashian catchphrase from an earlier era: “You’re doing amazing, sweetie!”
Kim crushes quiz questions about her fashion archive
Kim has been pondering some existential questions about her next style chapter, so, with Tracy Romulus in tow, she seeks answers by making a pilgrimage to the undisclosed location that contains her fashion archive. It’s a massive, multi-level depot with wall-to-wall boxes and clothing racks abound. “I’ve had so many different fashion eras,” Kim says, “So I just want to see where I’ve been and where I want to go… I think I have, like, 30,000 pieces.”
The sight is certainly relevant to more recent discourse around Kim’s style: namely, the controversial use of Marilyn Monroe’s iconic “Happy Birthday” dress for the 2022 Met Gala, which brought the ethics of conservation into the wider public discourse. Now we discover that, all along, Kim has been doing for herself what’s often done posthumously for icons by curators: compiling and preserving all of the clothes that represent a life lived. (One day, are we going to see these pieces on display somewhere?)
Kim also showed off her painstaking scrapbooks in her recent Vogue home tour, and really, you could argue that her reality show is its own video archive. Marilyn Monroe may have been known as the “most photographed woman in the world,” but Kim Kardashian is possibly the most archived. She’s even already mentally downloaded the contents of her mega-closet.
“The crazy thing about Kim,” Romulus says, “is you could hold up a dress and she’ll tell you where she wore the dress, what color her eyeshadow was, if she had a bang, if she had a ponytail.” “Quiz me,” Kim tells her. “Say an event.” Romulus starts throwing out various dates and looks: “New Year’s Eve, Las Vegas.” “White Gucci dress,” Kim says. “Dark shadow. I was newly single.”
Kim crushes every question Romulus throws her way. The deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida, author of Archive Fever, might wonder whether Kim remembers it all so well in part because of the existence of her archive. Does the existence of the archive ultimately mean more now than the original memories behind the dresses themselves? In any event, Kim’s recall comes off as rather lawyerly, reminding us of how many eras she still has in store. Hope there’s room in the closet!
Kim’s Balenciaga campaign and Vogue cover offer statements of independence
The episode begins with Kim and Kris discussing Kim’s forthcoming partnership with Balenciaga, for which she intends to negotiate and contract her own deal. “Since I’ve been learning so much about contracts in law school,” Kim says, “I feel like I can do this one on my own.” “You’re like a walking in-house attorney,” Kris replies.
Kim’s fame—in part the consequence of countless partnerships—is surely scaffolded by paperwork, and being able to manage her own contracts might be the ultimate form of empowerment. We’ve just learned that she’s been archiving herself all along. Now, with the ability to legally advocate for herself, Kim can self-construct even more completely.
She gets her moment to showcase her vision when the Vogue cover rolls around, and she’s afforded an element of creative control throughout the shoot. “Years ago, I wouldn’t have even dreamed that I would be in Vogue, let alone on the cover of Vogue,” she explains. “This time feels so different because I have such an opinion. Nothing before really felt like me. This is me.”
Still, Kim has always balanced her self-determination with the virtue of deference, and she’s not about to drop one of her secrets to success so fast. When Anna Wintour FaceTimes to ask whether they’ve “tried the Versace or Gucci,” the team begins fitting Kim in the Versace dress. With confident comedic timing, Kim looks to the camera and says: “Anna wants Versace, Anna gets Versace.”