Kim Kardashian's Collaboration with Carolina Lemke Has Arrived
“You’re at mommy’s sunglasses launch, and you’re wearing a different brand of sunglasses?” Kim Kardashian West playfully admonishes her daughter North. “Are you trying to blow up my spot?”
The five-year-old West bounds inside, where three heads sit atop spikes. All three are perfect latex replicas of Kim Kardashian West, but with longer hair (real human hair). But the heads are not mystical effigies or some kind of caution of impalement. Rather, all three are wearing selections of the veteran celebrity’s new sunglasses collection done with the Israel-by-way-of-Germany glasses brand Carolina Lemke.
Kardashian West is the U.S. partner of the brand, and she’s invited a group of influencers to try on the new shades. Juice Wrld plays as Kardashian West takes selfies with each and every person in the room. The influencers giddily try on each of the variety of styles—called Nirvana, Dusk, Tempest, Rider, Sahara, Chaotix, and Indra—each designed by Kardashian West. Each cost $90.
“I mean who doesn’t lose their glasses all the time, and then you’re so pissed when you’ve spent five or six hundred dollars on them,” Kardashian West tells L’Officiel at the launch.
Kardashian West got involved in the brand through Israeli model Bar Rafaeli, who is the brand’s partner in the Middle East.
“The first thing I saw from the brand that made me super interested was the commercial that Bar did,” Kardashian West told L’Officiel at the launch. “I just thought it was really well done and fun. Then, she introduced me to the partners, and having the conversations with them, and knowing that I could have full control over the sunglasses, the styles, the colors—literally everything.”
So Kardashian West enlisted the best creative team she could find, and set about to create the glasses collection of her dreams.
“For the campaign, I picked [photographers] Mert and Marcus, and I wanted that really long hair,” she says. “[Carolina Lemke] literally let me have full freedom to do whatever I wanted. And so, when the samples started to come in, I was supposed to do about six glasses, and we’re at about 20. I was just like, ‘I can’t decide. They’re so good, I really like them—let’s roll with more!’ I loved that. There were no real rules. And I also like partnering with a new brand that people don’t really know, so there’s no pre-conceived idea of what the brand is, what the customer is, and you can kind of make that up yourself.”
There’s something for everyone in the diverse assortment of styles available in the collection. There are large, visor-like shades (Nirvana, Sahara, and Rider); a pair that look a bit like the shape of a pair of 3-d glasses from the 80s (Tempest); a smaller, 90s-style rectangular pair (Dusk); a futuristic style (Chaotix); and a round, Lennon-esque pair (Indra). That variety is something Kardashian West pushed for.
“[The brand] definitely gave me some recommendations of what they think would sell, but I didn’t really want that information,” she says. “I was like, ‘I just want to do what I would wear. I never thought really small [glasses] looked that good on me. It’s really hard for me to find something, so we made one, and it looked really good on so many people—we tried it on so many people—I was like, ‘That’s it. I’ll do that one.’ The circular one, I did for my sister Kourtney. I always saw those in her closet, and so I was like, ‘I want to try one.’ And that looked good on me. And then I did this 90s style that I’ve seen on so many people, and it’s looked really good. I wanted some of the sporty ones in neutral colors. That was really important to me. I never really saw a visor-y, sporty one that was all gold or all silver, and the plastic on the side is more of a matte gold or silver, so it’s just a neutral version of that.”
It all adds up to a line of shades that can be paired to any of Kardashian West’s constant wardrobe changes.
“My mood changes, and my sunglass style change all the time,” she says. “I’ll do the sportier ones when I’m working out, when I’m in a bikini and on vacation, and the other ones when I’m just a little bit more sophisticated.”
Kardashian West’s proud mom, Kris Jenner, held court among the influencers, and touted the brand—unlike North, she came prepared in a pair of her daughter’s designs.
“They’re really well made,” she said. “They don’t feel cheap, and they feel super designer. Truly. I’ve been wearing these sunglasses forever, and they’re super comfortable.”
View the entire range, below.