A bleak scene graces the March cover of Architectural Digest magazine showing a curved staircase against a backdrop of neutral tones and a table with nary a fake fruit atop it.
This is the minimally designed suburban Los Angeles home of Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and their four children.
“Here is a glimpse of our minimal style,” Kardashian, 39, wrote, opening up the floodgates of social media shade. Her followers were quick to comment on the space’s impracticability.
“How do you keep a house like this clean with kids?” said one Instagram user who commented on a slideshow Kardashian posted on Monday — showing eight other photos, including an image of an empty, equally monochromatic hallway with vaulted ceilings.
“This is horrifying,” replied another Instagram commenter, and another said “it’s so cold and scary.”
Kardashian and West set their eyes on this home, described as a former suburban McMansion, in summer 2013.
“We passed by this incredibly extravagant home while strolling through the neighborhood,” Kardashian told AD of the property, which they reportedly bought for $20 million in 2014, then sank an additional $20 million into renovating. She later added, “I didn’t really know Kanye’s style at that point, but I thought the house was perfection. Kanye was less enthusiastic. He said, ‘It’s workable.’ ”
Eventually, the home would become a “futuristic Belgian monastery,” in West’s words. The couple tapped Belgian designer Axel Vervoordt, who Kanye, 42, had met at antique fairs in Venice and Maastricht, to outfit the space. In a recent house tour, Kardashian revealed that the design included a very peculiar basin-less bathroom sink.
“We didn’t talk about decoration but a kind of philosophy about how we live now and how we will live in the future,” Vervoordt told the magazine.
That philosophy is wabi-sabi — a difficult-to-translate phrase that is described as “wisdom in natural simplicity,” as The Post reported in 2019. It’s a Buddhist worldview that’s derived from the three hallmarks of existence — impermanence, suffering and emptiness — and has been a hallmark of Japanese design for centuries.
The result: minimal furnishings, natural materials and rooms covered in an off-white plaster.
In the AD story, Kardashian and West say the house, which includes a sprawling pool, is indeed kid-friendly. For instance, one room is solely dedicated to a soft sculpture by Isabel Rower that the two say, in terms of everything they do, is an art installation and a playroom.
“The kids ride their scooters down the hallways and jump around on top of the low Axel tables, which they use as a kind of stage,” says West. “This house may be a case study, but our vision for it was built around our family.”
While some Instagram users voiced their support for the minimal interior design, others praised a featured image that shows an all-pink bedroom anchored around a butterfly-shaped headboard. That space belongs to the couple’s eldest daughter, North, 6.
“Thank god y’all put aside the minimalism for norths [sic] room,” said another user.