Updated: 11 Dec 2025Author:
David Frederickson

Kim Kardashian’s kimono plot twist: from #KimOhNo disaster to “genius” fashion redemption

  1. Kim Kardashian just modelled a pale pink kimono for her Hulu legal drama *All’s Fair*, years after being slammed for naming her shapewear brand “Kimono.”
  2. The robe is custom, character-linked and tagged “KIMono by Milligan,” and fans are calling the move “genius” and “this time it’s appropriate.”
  3. It’s a deliberate wink at the old cultural appropriation scandal that forced her to rebrand to Skims, now a multi-billion-dollar empire.
  4. The timing is sharp: *All’s Fair* is getting roasted by critics, but Kardashian’s kimono look is the one thing viewers agree she absolutely nailed.
  5. For UK fans, it’s peak Kardashian: controversy, course-correction and a perfectly lit fashion shot that doubles as a business case study.

Six years after #KimOhNo, Kim quietly reopens the kimono file

From attempted “Kimono” trademark to global Skims takeover

Back in 2019, Kim Kardashian tried to launch her shapewear line under the name “Kimono,” complete with trademark plans that sent Japanese officials and half of Twitter into meltdown. The hashtag #KimOhNo trended, the mayor of Kyoto wrote an open letter, and Kim eventually backed down, rebranding the company as Skims instead.

That rebrand turned out to be a blessing disguised as a PR nightmare, with Skims going on to become a multi-billion-dollar brand and a staple on A-list bodies and airport mannequins alike. Still, the fiasco cemented “kimono” as one of the most radioactive words in her career, the sort of thing PR teams usually bury in a locked drawer labelled “never again.”

Why walking back into a kimono now is such a big swing

Fast-forward to 2025 and Kim is promoting *All’s Fair*, a glossy Hulu legal drama where she plays divorce lawyer Allura Grant in a wardrobe that screams “billable hours, but make it thirst-trappy.” In a new promo shot, she appears in a soft pink silk kimono with brown trim and an embroidered obi bearing the initials “AG,” very much tying the look to her fictional character rather than her own brand.

Inside the garment, there’s a hand-stitched label reading “KIMono by Milligan,” a nod to designer Milligan Beaumont, and a tongue-in-cheek echo of that old product name. It’s not subtle, but that’s the point; she’s effectively saying, “Yes, I remember the scandal, and I’ve turned it into a costume detail for a lawyer who monetises tension for a living.”

The internet’s verdict: “This time it’s appropriate”

From cultural appropriation lecture to cautious applause

When the photos hit Instagram, plenty of fans clocked the irony immediately and started quoting her old controversy in the comments. Instead of another dragging, the dominant reaction was a kind of wary approval, with users calling the styling “genius” and pointing out that this time the kimono is contextually tied to a character and not being packaged as a Western underwear brand.

Fashion writers highlighted how the robe looks like an intentional homage rather than a sloppy rebrand, especially with the embroidered Allura Grant initials and the credit to Milligan Beaumont. The mood is less “you’re stealing culture” and more “you finally hired someone who paid attention in the meeting,” which in Kardashian terms counts as growth.

How Japanese garment, Hollywood drama and Hulu promo all intersect

The nuance here is that the kimono isn’t being sold as a product or claimed as Kim’s invention, but used as costume for a specific character in a fictional setting. That doesn’t magically erase the history of Western celebrities mishandling Japanese aesthetics, but it does sit closer to traditional costume design than to branding a shapewear line after an entire garment.

Fans who remember the original uproar are reading the look as a kind of visual “lesson learned,” especially since Skims is now wildly successful under a completely different name. Kardashian gets to reference the past, signal self-awareness and still post an insanely flattering outfit shot, which is pretty much her holy trinity.

The *All’s Fair* problem: flop reviews, fire outfits

When your show bombs but your sleeves trend

The kimono moment is landing at an interesting time for Kim’s acting era, because *All’s Fair* is getting brutal reviews even as it breaks streaming records. Critics have shredded the writing and her performance, with some outlets noting the show is sitting at a painfully low score on Rotten Tomatoes while still being Hulu’s biggest scripted debut in years.

That disconnect means a lot of viewers are hate-watching the legal drama for the chaos and staying for the outfits, and the kimono shot has quickly become the unofficial “this is what the show thinks it looks like” poster. When your script is being roasted but your sleeves are the size of small parachutes, you lean into the fashion discourse and hope nobody notices the dialogue.

Allura Grant: the character who dresses like a mood board

Within the series, Kim’s character Allura Grant is a high-powered divorce lawyer with a wardrobe that blends power-suit structure and influencer thirst traps. The kimono fits into that universe as a statement piece, halfway between traditional formality and Instagram-ready drama.

Fans have been joking that Allura spends more time planning outfits than drafting prenups, but the kimono look actually makes sense for a character who weaponises visuals in court and online. If you’re going to charge four figures an hour to handle people’s breakups, you may as well arrive looking like you just stepped out of a prestige fashion campaign.

How this hits different in the UK and Europe

British viewers, fashion fatigue and appropriation déjà vu

UK audiences have a long memory for Kardashian fashion messes, from waist trainers to the original Kimono saga and that Marilyn Monroe dress at the Met Gala. So the sight of her back in a kimono could easily have triggered another round of think-pieces and exhausted sighs in Soho media offices.

Instead, a lot of British commentary has focused on the fact that this is a costume for a character in a clearly fictional context, not a product being sold under a trademarked Japanese word. People are still side-eyeing the choice, but there’s more appetite to talk about how slick the styling is and how it plays against her previous mistakes than to relitigate 2019 from scratch.

Why UK fashion girls are saving the look anyway

Separate from the politics, the outfit itself is catnip for UK fashion heads who love a statement sleeve and a neutral-but-expensive colour palette. The mix of soft blush silk, structured obi and modern hair and makeup lands squarely in “screenshot this for inspo” territory, especially for winter wedding guests and over-dressed brunches.

There’s a strong sense that you could translate the vibe into a more culturally sensitive, kimono-inspired silhouette without literally copying the garment. That’s the sweet spot British stylists and influencers are already eyeing, because nothing says “trend” like a look you can tone down just enough to wear on the Central line without causing a scene.

Kim’s bigger narrative: mistakes, monetised

Turning every scandal into a brand beat

The kimono comeback fits squarely into the Kardashian long game, where every controversy eventually gets recycled into content, a storyline or a product tweak. She has built an empire on turning internet backlash into focus groups in real time, then selling the “fixed” version back to the same people who were furious last week.

Here, the progression is neat: attempted Kimono trademark, uproar, Skims rebrand, cultural sensitivity lectures, and finally a carefully framed kimono as wardrobe for a fictional lawyer. It’s like watching a crisis-management PowerPoint come to life in satin.

Skims, law school and the image of “growth”

Part of why this lands better now is that Kim has spent the past few years carefully curating an image of personal development, with her prison reform work, law studies and more considered public statements. You can argue about how deep the transformation goes, but on the surface she is at least framing herself as someone who learns from earlier missteps.

Placing a kimono in the context of a legal drama about divorce and justice adds a narrative of accountability, whether or not viewers fully buy it. Even sceptics admit there is a difference between trying to trademark a cultural garment and using one to illustrate a character who, in theory, understands nuance and consequence.

What this means for celebrity fashion and cultural lines

Can any outfit ever be pure “just aesthetics” again?

The reaction to Kim’s kimono look shows how impossible it is for a celebrity of her scale to wear anything without waking up the cultural commentary brigade. On one hand, that’s exhausting for everyone involved; on the other, it reflects a world that’s more alert to where trends come from and who gets paid for them.

Her choice doesn’t get a free pass simply because the fit is immaculate, but it does show that people are willing to acknowledge improvement when they see actual distance from past behaviour. The phrase “this time it’s appropriate” in fan comments is doing a lot of quiet work there, holding both truths at once.

Future red carpets: smarter styling or just smarter spin?

Going forward, you can expect more celebrities to attempt similar full-circle fashion moments, revisiting old missteps with extra context, better collaborators and a very online awareness of how it will all play. Some will nail the balance between respect and spectacle; others will misjudge it and get dragged all over again.

Kim’s kimono gamble suggests there is an audience for redemption looks, as long as they come with a hint of humility and not just a press release. Whether that lesson sticks beyond a few Instagram slides is another question entirely, preferably answered somewhere far away from a trademark office.

References. A list of references and links used

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