Kim Kardashian's All's Fair Gown Took 500 Hours to Make. Critics Gave the Show Zero
Kardashian wore a custom Ashi Studio corset to the Season 2 premiere of the Hulu drama critics greeted last fall with a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Kim Kardashian walked the New York premiere of All's Fair's second season Monday night in a custom grey couture gown from Ashi Studio that reportedly took more than 500 hours of handwork. It had a sculpted corset, Chantilly lace, sheer panels, long suede cords and a crocodile-effect leather piece at the neck, and it was styled by Law Roach, whose job is to make sure a woman can be seen from low orbit. Five hundred hours is twelve and a half work weeks. Somewhere a seamstress has a husband who hasn't seen her since Labor Day.
The occasion was Hulu's legal drama, in which Kardashian plays Allura Grant alongside Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts and Teyana Taylor, with Cauã Reymond joining as a bodyguard. Season 2 arrives Wednesday with three episodes and then one a week. The first season, which debuted last November, sat at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes a day after release. USA Today's critic called it the worst show of the year, and The Guardian gave it no stars, which is hard to do, since stars are the only thing The Guardian ever gives anyone.
It was also a hit for Hulu, and here I have to tip my hat. Critics hated it, people watched it, and Hulu renewed it, which is the oldest story in show business and the reason nobody in show business reads critics past the first paragraph. The Kardashians figured this out nearly two decades ago: reviews are the weather, and money is the climate.
There's a logic to the dress, too. A show built like a magazine spread needs a star who arrives like one, and nobody alive arrives like Kim Kardashian. She doesn't wear clothes so much as survive them, and she has worn so many corsets to so many events that her ribs probably file their own taxes. The gown got kinder notices Tuesday morning than the show got all last season, and it didn't have to deliver a single line.
Glenn Close was there as well, matching her look with the drag performer Alexis Stone, according to Yahoo. Close has been nominated for eight Oscars and won none, while a reality star got a second season out of a zero. That isn't a scandal. It's Hollywood, where the prize goes not to whoever's best but to whoever keeps showing up in a better outfit. Fashion is the one art where the suffering is visible from across the room. The rest of us just suffer in sweatpants.