That celebrities might on some level collude with the paparazzi is, at this point, obvious. In 2002, Britney Spears wore a “Dump Him” T-shirt while her separation from Justin Timberlake was generating significant column inches. It was a not-so-tacit maneuver that helped the musician to regain a little control over what was (and wasn’t) being said. And then, some 20 years later, Addison Rae was caught “reading” from Britney’s memoir just as she was beginning to promote her debut EP, which has since elicited a number of comparisons to pop music’s original Louisiana belle.
It would have been helpful to have remembered this when I spent an arduous three minutes attempting to identify the dress Kylie Jenner has just been photographed in. After all, the photographs were too well-lit, the framing and location that bit too considered to be the traditional impromptu paparazzi shots. One of my colleagues said the dress “looks kinda Acne Studios,” but I thankfully have just enough journalistic chops to recognise that Kylie would be using these photo opps to plug Khy. The fourth collection—which is slated for release later this month—revolves around knotted stretch dresses, much like the one she was pictured wearing yesterday afternoon in an empty car park.
Kylie wore that soon-to-be-launched dress with Miu Miu’s Arcadie bag and The Row’s Sling boots, casting a knowing side-eye to the camera. The whole thing felt reminiscent of Bottega Veneta’s pre-spring 2024 campaign, which saw Kendall Jenner and her Doberman strutting through Los Angeles in November 2023. First considered just another opportunistic street-style moment, those shots soon wound up on Matthieu Blazy’s Instagram with the words “Bottega Veneta” emblazoned across. I can only assume that, once Kylie Jenner launches her for-now-rumored fragrance line, paparazzo culture will have developed to also include a scratch-and-sniff feature.
This article first appeared on British Vogue.
