Reality star Kim Kardashian has mastered how to turn her personal life into cold-hard cash or cultural collateral. The billionaire bombshell and former wife of Kanye West revealed that she has storage units of the producer-turned-designer’s stuff and has been thinking about what she will do with it.
Whether she sells it or gives it away, Kardashian sees her ex’s stuff as a come-up for her daughter.
In an episode of her new series, “The Kardashians,” she visited the units and went through some of the mounds of memorabilia. While sharing the storage warehouse with the show, she confessed that she loved going “through to organize” and considers herself a “memory hoarder.”
A way she is thinking of purging is by selling or giving away some of the items she gathered over the span of her relationship with Kanye, specifically clothing, to benefit his children.
As she looked through the original prototypes of Yeezy gear, boasting that she has “every single Yeezy” piece created by Ye, she said, “Can you imagine North’s sweet 16 and the merch tables of the stuff she wants to give away?”
While many can split hairs about if the statement is about “gifting” or “selling,” Kardashian understands the value of her “breakup baggage.”
She is not the first.
In December 2022, Helen Skelton, the ex-wife of English rugby player Richie Myler, sold his belongings at Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House after a very public breakup.
According to a source, “Helen needed a huge sort out after the break-up and despite some of the items possessing many memories, she felt it was best she sold them on.” On the show, she sold a total of 18 lots, which included an antique vaulting horse, a Victorian dentist chair, and two Art Deco armchairs.
An old girlfriend of Twitter owner Elon Musk, Jennifer Gwynne, made some profit off her time with one of the richest men in the world by selling her breakup baggage. She auctioned off a cache of photos and Musk memorabilia at the Boston-based RR Auction, according to CNN.
She unloaded 18 candid photos of the entrepreneur, a signed birthday card, and an emerald necklace from a Zambian emerald mine of Musk’s father.
The card that is believed to have sold for more than $10,000 reads, “Happy Birthday, Jennifer (aka, Boo-Boo), Love, Elon.”
Kardashian’s reasons for holding on to the stuff have less to do with one day being able to capitalize financially off her famous former partner. She said it connects her with the person she fell in love with and will one day link her kids to his legacy in an intimate way.
It just so happens that many of the things that link her to legacy could make her a lot of money also.
According to CBS News, Yeezy accounted for about 10 percent of Adidas’ annual revenue in 2022, and terminating the deal in May caused the company to lose a whopping $246 million.
“I am really at peace with it. There are so many amazing things that came out of my marriage and my divorce,” Kardashian said. “This is my time capsule of the best times.”
She continued, “The reality is that life is really different, and when you know it can’t get back there, that is what sucks. That is what is hard. But my kids will have the best memories and this will be the best tribute for them.”
