This is the last story in Back Row’s special year-end look at fashion and culture now that we’re halfway through the 2020s. Earlier posts in this series:
Thank you for taking this journey with me, and I’ll be back to a normal posting schedule next week!
At the end of 2022, I published a story in this newsletter titled “Why the Vibe Shift Might Finally Leave the Kardashians Behind.” The KarJenners had had an unusually controversial year, ranging from Kim Kardashian’s Marilyn Monroe dress stunt at the Met Gala to Kylie Jenner’s professionally installed Christmas tree (“Ahh the family tradition of just paying people to put up your tree lights and ornaments”). Emerging from the pandemic, the public wasn’t willing to celebrate this family’s wealth and fame the way they’d always celebrated their wealth and fame. Even British Elle this year published the story: “Are the Kardashians Losing Their Influence?”
, branding expert and experienced fashion executive who writes here on Substack, predicted in that story that it would take a few years, but that the family would fade. Looking at the forensic evidence from 2024, it looks like she and I were on to something.
For the purposes of this story, I’m focusing on Kim, Kendall, and Kylie, who have the biggest footprint in the fashion industry proper. Let’s take a look at their trajectories over the last two years. (Cover and campaign data referenced below was pulled from Models.com, one of my favorite resources.)
Kim Kardashian
Kim felt inescapable in fashion in 2022. She did six magazine covers, including American Vogue. “I’ve chosen myself,” read the cover line. Lots of brands chose her, too. She appeared in ad campaigns for Stuart Weitzman, Balenciaga, and Dolce & Gabbana, along with a bundle of ads for Skims and the launch of her skincare brand SKKN. In 2023, she did all of that plus two Marc Jacobs campaigns, along with four magazine covers. In 2024, she did three covers — for Variety, Vogue China, and the Financial Times’s How to Spend It supplement. Balenciaga was the only fashion campaign she did, though she collaborated with Dolce & Gabbana on a Skims collection and appeared in those ads. And a lot of us probably saw more of her when she posted about her creepy Tesla robot than from any of those things!
If you look at her Google search interest, she peaked in the early 2010s, and has been on a slow decline, with a small bump around the 2022 Met Gala and a steady downward slope from there. The biggest spike in interest was when Paper magazine dropped her nude editorial and cover. Though her high-fashion profile increased from that moment, she’s been in steady decline in overall search interest since, this past year being the lowest search volume for her since Keeping Up With the Kardashians premiered in 2007.
This is not all bad news for Kim, though. While interest in her specifically is declining, interest in Skims, her most successful brand, is holding steady, perhaps increasing.
The good thing about this is it suggests her brand can perform whether or not she’s the top clickbait in the Daily Mail on any given day. For a celebrity brand, this is the challenge: how do you keep people buying without the namesake’s face in the public consciousness at all times? If Kim tires of Skims and decides to stop promoting it, it might stand a chance, which may be the best thing you can say about any celebrity brand.
Kendall Jenner
This year, Kendall appeared solo on the cover of American Vogue, French Vogue, and M Le magazine du Monde. In 2023, she did seven covers, for American titles Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and W, and international editions of Bazaar and Vogue. She appeared in campaigns for 12 major fashion and beauty clients in 2023, and seven in 2024. She appeared in fewer shows this year as well (assuming you consider Vogue World and that L’Oreal thing actual shows). The point is, we saw less of her in fashion this year than we have in a while. Her Google search interest has also waned from a peak in the 2010s:
Kylie Jenner
When Kylie Jenner started attending Schiaparelli couture shows in 2022, the vibe around her changed. Couture shows weren’t her typical milieu. She had always been more Revolve Festival. But I wonder now if she was methodically boosting her fashion profile in advance of the launch of her clothing line Khy. Remember, the brand that was briefly everywhere when it went live November 1, 2023? Just about a year later, I had forgotten about it until Kris Jenner appeared in ads that infiltrated my Instagram algorithm.
The KarJenners are known for brands that come and go. Fashionista even published a handy story about these in 2018, “A Brief History of the Failed Kardashian Beauty Brands No One Ever Talks About,” including Khroma Beauty and Kylie Cosmetics. I wouldn’t be surprised if Khy also didn’t last — it’s launch generated basically no additional search interest in Kylie.
In conclusion, it does not say “Kardashians” on the Statue of Liberty!
In all seriousness, though, it seems safe to say that the Kardashians were THE stars of the 2010s. The 2020s belong to others — perhaps Charli XCX, Chappel Roan, Sabrina Carpenter? Virtually no one maintains pop culture supremacy across multiple decades, unless they’re a rare talent like Beyoncé or an actual royal. The Kardashians were likely affected by overexposure, along with their inability to transition from the still-image Instagram age to the short-form video-driven one.
That said, I could see Kim becoming something of a Martha Stewart, a celebrity who manages to consistently hum along in the background of pop culture, popping up every so often to our delight. Only, instead of her egg nog recipe going viral, it will be her conspicuous consumption (like buying her friend a Cyber Truck for her birthday) or advice about plastic surgery procedures. I never became a fan of their reality show, but I remain incredibly impressed with how Kim has grown Skims and was honestly amused to see her in small doses this year.
This concludes Back Row’s year-end series! I’ll be back in your inbox with one more story next week before Christmas. Then I’ll be off until January 2, when I’ll return with one of Back Row’s most popular franchises: fashion predictions! See how I did in 2024:
