The bag appeared on her Hulu series All’s Fair and in a Vogue Hong Kong interview about the show’s fashion. One of the Vogue images showed Kim wearing a gray top, a satin skirt, and a matching draped cowl hood while posing inside an establishment. Another showed her sitting on a sofa with the bag placed beside her.
According to PETA, the bags date back to the ’80s and were allegedly made from the skin of an elephant that had been fatally shot on a safari. They were never officially sold by Hermés and are considered extremely rare today.
A luxury goods consignment store posted the Vogue images on Instagram, where they quickly drew criticism. One commenter wrote, “This is deeply disgusting and disturbing.” Another said, “Elephants are magical, majestic, and special beings & they are to be respected!”
“This is not okay. It’s not ‘cool,’ and calling it fashion is a stretch. It’s disturbing and honestly embarrassing,” someone else said while another questioned, “Have you no shame????”
Ireland Baldwin — the daughter of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger — also criticized the display on her Instagram.
“This is…. Beyond,” she wrote in the comments, before calling out Kim directly on her Instagram Story. “This is so disgusting and shameful. I don’t understand how these people are supported the way they are.”
Kim addressed the controversy on yesterday’s episode of the Khloé In Wonderland podcast, revealing that the bag was just a prop for All’s Fair.
“I brought a lot of my bags in to film All’s Fair as accessories, but then we just got a bunch of other ones that we would have and leave on set that we could leave there and grab if we ever needed one for a specific outfit,” she explained.
She added, “If you look at it — I actually have pictures of it — the hardware is upside down. So it’s like an actual full fake one.”
Kim said that she is “full faux fur” — something she credits to Ellen DeGeneres, a longtime animal rights activist and family friend. “Like I have my vintage furs,” she said, “[but] I completely toned down a lot of things. It was [Ellen’s] approach and the way that she communicated with me about it.”
Kim said Ellen even called to question her about the bag amid the controversy, and she confirmed it was fake.
“But what I was so annoyed with myself about is just that message that the elephant Birkin is okay because people didn’t know if it was real or fake,” Kim added. “So even just putting that out there, I wish I was a little bit smarter on that and made a better choice on that.”
You can listen to her full remarks here around the 43:30 mark.