Did Kim Kardashian Mean to Honour Misogynistic Artwork at the Met? - by Eleanor Getting
As an art historian, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the art historical references threaded across this year’s Met Gala carpet. The theme, “Fashion Is Art,” responds to the Costume Institute’s current exhibition, “Costume Art” that explores the embodiment of art in fashion and the dressed body.
It seems like the perfect theme for Kim Kardashian, a Met Gala regular, whose previous looks have largely focused on the body as a fashion statement. Kardashian has taken this to extremes, from 2021 where the faceless Balenciaga black dress transformed her into a silhouette, to carving her waist down to 19 inches in a Maison Margiela corset in 2024.
Certainly the American media personality hit the mark again this year, wearing a highly sculpted orange lacquer breast plate that was designed in collaboration with British Pop Artist Allen Jones. Instead of being a true representation of the celebrity’s own body, a cast was repurposed that references Jones’ earlier work like Body Armour, originally modelled by Kate Moss.
Kardashian stated that “Allen Jones would be iconic. Sexy. Classic. Cool. Innovative.” Iconic maybe, but not necessarily for the right reason. Jones is infamous for his Women As Furniture series from the 1960s, in which casts of half naked women are arranged to form tables and chairs. In a lot of the fibreglass sculptures, the women appear to wear leather and high heeled boots and are positioned subserviently on their backs or on all fours. For decades, his work has split critics as either satirised sexuality or deeply misogynistic.
His work has always been provocative, and similarly Kardashian doesn’t shy away from a statement. But in working with Allen Jones, what is she exactly trying to state? In recent years, Kardashian has moved away from being synonymous with the idealised hourglass figure of the 2010s, to also a multi-hyphenate mogul and lawyer-in-training. She is not simply a body to be manipulated and contorted, as Jones’ sculptures are, rather incredibly industrious.
However, it is unrealistic to say that Kardashian no longer capitalises on her body, something that, like the cast she adorned at the Met Gala, can be perfectly sculpted in a high gloss finish. We have not innovated beyond unrealistic beauty standards, as this look only reinforces in hardened plastic.
by Eleanor Getting, NOUS Arts Editor
Sources:
