Kanye West Knew Everyone Would Hate Kim Kardashian's Painted Birkin

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West pictures

(Image credit: Rex)

The rapper expected the world to go mad when they saw the controversial Christmas gift he gave his fiancée

Kanye West expected some major backlash surrounding the Christmas gift he chose for Kim Kardashian last year. In fact, he knew that pretty much everyone would hate it.

But while that knowledge might make some men reconsider, apparently Kanye thought the controversial nature of the bag made it the perfect present.

On Dec. 27, Kim shared an Instagram pic of her gift - a Birkin bag painted by artist George Condo - and, as expected, her fans were not impressed.

http://instagram.com/p/iaDXxZuS81/embed/

One of her follower, jan_keefe wrote: 'It's almost like kanye said lets get a gorgeous birkin and eff it up and give it as a gift and say its one if a kind, it's almost a joke! Lol.'

Well, Jan, it turns out that's pretty much exactly what happened.

Condo explained to W magazine how the gift came about: 'Kanye and I both knew immediately that people who knew our collaboration would think it was fun but that Kim’s fan base would go berserk,' he said.

'The whole point was to take an icon of consumerism and change it, which is like blasphemy. "You can’t do this!" It short circuits people's concept of what’s untouchable, which is why it was fun to do. If I had just done it and put it in my closet, it wouldn’t mean a thing,' he said, laughing. 'But when you stick that bag in the hands of Kim Kardashian, well, then you create a whole different atmosphere. It’s about context.'

So basically, Kanye wanted to take a designer handbag (that costs upwards of £5,000) and have naked people and monsters painted on it - just to cause a stir out of people.

Hmm...sounds like just the kind of sweet, personal, private gift we'd want from our fiancé. What a sentimental guy!

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Ali Gray is an award-winning content director and digital strategist. Most recently she was the Director of Branded Content at Hearst, and helped to bridge the gap between the editorial and commercial worlds working across all Hearst brands, including ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Prior to that she worked as an editor contributing to several brands such as The Telegraph, iVillage UK.