Over the weekend, Kourtney Kardashian married longtime friend and emo boyfriend supreme, Travis Barker. If you’re on the internet at all, you surely stumbled upon the slew of style posts documenting Kourtney and her family’s couture-filled trip to the Italian coast.
After watching the eldest Kardashian child struggle with her love life for nearly 17 seasons of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, I’ll admit I was happy for her that that she found her seemingly happy ending with the Blink 182 drummer. Under her extravagant, embroidered veil—which payed homage to Barker’s skull tattoo—she looked genuinely happy.
Then the fashion credits started rolling in for every member of the Kardashian crew, and nearly all of them were in head-to-toe Dolce & Gabbana, and Kris Jenner posted Instagram Stories from the brand’s pop-up shop—also in Portofino during the big wedding weekend—that the hamster wheel started turning in my head. Was this entire affair a grander version of the sponsored #ad posts we regularly see influencers post to social media? It’s unclear if the label paid for any of the nuptials, though they did tell Fashionista that they “were indeed happy to host this very special occasion.”
But the real question is: Why would America’s most famous family openly invite a brand who has frequently exhibited wide-ranging bigotry (and has called the family “cheap”) to join them on this global stage? Because they’re Kardashians and time and time again have shown us they can’t be canceled no matter how badly the internet wants them to be, much like Dolce & Gabbana.
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In 2007, the Italian fashion house, co-created by then couple Domenico Dolce and Steffano Gabbana, staged an ad campaign featuring a model pinned down while several male onlookers gazed on, per Reuters. The brand’s Spring/Summer 2013 collection featured accessories akin to racist imagery and colonial caricatures, later going on to sell “Slave Sandals,” on their website three years later.