The weather, if not the climate, changed in Paris dramatically as the queen of celebrities - Kim Kardashian-West - was tied up, held at gunpoint and robbed of $14m worth of jewellery in the city of love and fashion, reports quote the police saying.
But this big Paris heist has left Twitter in a tizzy of emotions, rolling in good old celeb bashing as well as using the incident as a peg to hang their respectives rants on.While sources said the reality TV star was “badly shaken but physically unharmed” after the armed assailtants tied Kardashian up in the flat’s bathroom before fleeing the scene, social media went on an overdrive of speculation.
The five armed men, who were still at large, stole "a jewellery box containing valuables worth €6m (£5.2m) as well as a ring worth €4m, and mobile telephones", according to reports.
Kim Kardashian-West with husband Kanye West. [Photo: Reuters] |
It was a heist made for Hollywood with the French media reporting that a lot of handcuffing, gun flashing and tieing up the celebrity victim and locking her up in the guess where, yes the bathroom, happened that is likely to keep the tabloids occupied for days to come. The men apparanetly wore masks, fake police vests and their late night entrè looked too fit for celluloid than reality.
Moreover, Paris landmarks such as Rue Tronchet building, Madeleine church and Elysèe Palace, haute-couture boutiques such as Rue du Fabourg-Saint Honorè were part of the script making it a fantastic candidate for possible cine adaptation later.
The 35-year-old had been spending quality time in Paris since last week for the fashion week and had attended the Balenciaga show earlier on Sunday. The evning of course had a different show in place.
Her pop singer superstar husband, Kanye West, dutifully halted his performance at the Meadows music and arts festival at Citi Field in New York on Sunday night, and citing a “family emergency” made a dramatic exit.
Confirmations of the pop star ending his show made global headlines.
But that meant that Twitterati got their fangs out and bit into a slice of the social media pie being cooked at the expense of the reality TV star. From harmless jibes to nasty jokes, it got a little out of control in no time.
Bathed in super-luxury, Kim Kardashian is synonymous with glamour at its rawest and unabashed. The private apartment where the fashion icon and reality TV star was staying, called the Hôtel de Pourtalès, is a piece of history itself, built in 1838.
On the famous Paris boulevard, where heritage now meets 24X7 consumer culture, the high-society-frequented 8th arrondissement had Kardashian follow the famous footsteps of Leonardo DiCaprio, Madonna, Prince and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, among a host of other movers and shakers.
However, the Kardashian mugged episode also got tongues wagging about the menace that is celebrity culture and the unbelievable limelight it gets at the expense of hard news such as children dying in Aleppo, or black youth killed by white cops of America and Europe.
Yet, Kardashian, forever unflappable and hardly ever without makeup, beat Twitter with this post: hauled up security with a dash of style that she knows the world will lap up no matter what.