Mere days after she climbed the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the 2025 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian arrived this afternoon at the historic Voltaire courthouse in Paris to testify against the armed robbers who allegedly broke into her hotel room, taped her ankles, and stole over $9 million-worth of diamond jewels in 2016. That she chose the occasion to drop the trailer for All’s Fair–the soon-to-be-released Ryan Murphy series in which she plays a high-flying lawyer–should come as no surprise to anyone aware of Kardashian’s canny manufacturing of the cultural moment.
400 journalists–almost ten times the capacity of the courtroom–have signed up to witness Kardashian recount the details of that traumatic evening and the life-changing loss of personal freedom that ensued. No cameras were permitted inside the courthouse, though, meaning the photographs taken outside serve a more significant role than usual in controlling the public narrative. And so, she wore a power-shouldered skirt suit (look 11 from John Galliano’s spring 1995 collection) with a diamond anklet, a diamond Samer Halimeh necklace, and a stack of diamond Repossi and Briony Raymond earrings. It was a statement of self-possession that hardly bears explaining.
Kardashian was always going to wear high fashion for such a high-status event, but it is interesting to consider the broader ramifications that fateful evening might have had on her relationship with fashion in general. It took place while she was on a trip to Paris Fashion Week, and as Kardashian Kolloquim’s MJ Corey has argued, connected to her–even in the most violent circumstances–to the notion of high fashion. “I consider the Paris robbery to be the real certification of Kim’s belonging at Paris Fashion Week,” the theorist said on TikTok, adding that, “it forever connected her to Paris as a setting, an elite place where something big happened to her as someone that previously didn’t belong in those spaces.” The trial continues until May 23, the details of which will be unveiled in the next series of The Kardashians.