Kim Kardashian has candidly revealed that she hasn’t bought any jewelery since she was robbed at gunpoint in Paris in 2016.
The 42-year-old reality star made the revelation during a recent episode of The Kardashians, which aired on June 22. Her comments came as she reflected on the October 2016 robbery, during which she was gagged and held at gunpoint by a group of masked robbers at her Paris hotel. The robbers stole nearly $10m worth of jewelery from Kardashian after they’d seen the jewels on her social media.
The episodes ofThe Kardashians saw the Skims founder on a trip to Milan, where she walked the runway at Milan Fashion Week as a guest curator for Dolce & Gabbana’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection. When designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana gifted a black-and-white diamond cross necklace to Kardashian, she called it the “nicest piece of jewelery [she] owned,” as she noted she “lost all” of hers during the Paris robbery.
She went on to reveal that she’s been avoiding buying and wearing jewelery the last seven years, as her priorities shifted after the theft.
“After I was robbed in Paris, I haven’t bought jewelery,” she said during a confessional interview. “I haven’t really been about wearing jewelery, because when it was taken from me, I didn’t know I was ready for that experience of what it meant but I was. I was ready to give it up.”
According to Kardashian, that is why the gift from the designers “symbolized more than getting a diamond cross necklace”.
“This brought a piece of my glamor back to me,” she said. “And that’s why it’s so special that I got it back from a really meaningful experience.”
Kardashian then shared another reason why the gift was special, as she recalled: “The first thing I ever bought when I got a check was a cross diamond necklace.”
This is not the first time that Kardashian has spoken out about the 2016 robbery. During an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians in June 2021, Kardashian revealed that she had agoraphobia during quarantine, after the anxiety was first sparked when she was robbed in Paris.
“I feel like I had agoraphobia, definitely, after my robbery in Paris,” the KKW Beauty mogul said. “Like definitely would have stayed in, hated to leave, I didn’t want anybody to know where I was and didn’t want to be seen. I just had such anxiety.”
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, agoraphobia is an “anxiety disorder that involves intense fear and anxiety of any place or situation where escape might be difficult”.
In August 2022, Yunis Abbas, one of the men arrested for the robbery, shared details about the heist in an interview with ViceNews. During the conversation, he said he felt no guilt for the crime, despite acknowledging that he must have “traumatised” Kardashian.
Abbas spent nearly two years in prison for the 2016 robbery before he was granted early release on health grounds.