Kim Kardashian may have won the battle against Missguided's fast-fashion knock-offs but she lost the war when she named her forthcoming shapewear line, Kimono. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal released its first ever digital issue with the reality star as its cover girl and she's speaking out about the ordeal.
“I heard it, and it instantly clicked with me,” Kardashian West tells WSJ of the word “Kimono” prior to hashtag #KimOhNo trending on Twitter. “It started with the Kim pun. And I think ono means ‘one,’ ” she said at the time. “The Kim part I thought was, like, clever. I’ve always been a little bit more minimal when it comes to branding and I just think that incorporates me, but also, like, one.”
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She acknowledges the name should have been researched thoroughly first. “You would think we would have obviously thought it through a little bit deeper,” Kardashian West tells WSJ over the phone after her public apology. “I’m the first person to say, OK, of course, I can’t believe we didn’t think of this. I obviously had really innocent intentions. But, let’s listen. And I want to really listen. And I want to really take it all in.” What's more, Kardashian West says she really does love Japan. “My husband was in Japan when all of this was happening. It’s a place that we love and go to. I have such respect.” (Remember when Kanye West referred to his too-small sandals as “Japanese-style?”)
That wasn't the only thing the mother-of-four cleared up in the digital issue, either. “I don’t even know if that’s possible,” she says of rumors she had her ribs removed to fit into her Thierry Mugler dress for this year’s Met Gala. Instead, she says she wore a Mister Pearl corset under the silicone-covered-silk-organza-and-crystals dress. “I have never felt pain like that in my life,” she says. “I’ll have to show you pictures of the aftermath when I took it off—the indentations on my back and my stomach.”
Clearly, Kardashian West isn't above suffering in the name of fashion. “I’ll never be a person who says it’s a more positive thing if I show my cellulite.” But don’t expect indentations when you wear her yet-to-be-renamed shapewear line. “The feeling when I had to wear that corset, [my shapewear] is not that. It’s the second skin that makes me feel comfortable and cozy and all smoothed.”
“I love to be sucked in,” she adds.