“The fast-cooling Los Angeles afternoon air is filled with the scent of eucalyptus and mimosa,” is how Vogue’s Hamish Bowles begins his cover story featuring "The World's Most Talked About Couple," Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, for the magazine’s April issue.
Photographed by the legendary Annie Leibovitz (who also shot the Kardashian Kollection for Sears campaign in 2011), the editorial spread of the “creative polyglot” and his fiancee, a “cultural phenomenon,” is a display of gratuitous excess. Kardashian dons an array of wedding dresses by Lanvin, Shiaparelli, and Alexander McQueen’s Sarah Burton (who also designed Kate Middleton’s nuptials gown) as she poses alongside West and their daughter/muse, baby North.
“I put Kanye’s big chains around her, and I put a little Louis bag and some Jordans, and I was like, ‘What up, Daddy?’” Kardashian says of her daughter. West has even created a stop-frame video of North that makes it look like she is break-dancing.
Bowles digs into the duo’s inspirations and obsessions, with Kardashian highlighting her love for the late Elizabeth Taylor, and West discussing his preoccupation with fantasy—think Walt Disney, Tim Burton, or yes, his “wifey.” “Kim is like a fantasy, period,” West explains. “She’s like a dream girl. And I think a dream girl should live in a dream world.”
Kardashian, of course, is enchanted by West’s love and devotion. “It was the most special day of my life,” she recalls of their elaborate proposal. “Literally, he is the most romantic person I’ve ever even heard of… I do live in a dream world… I get to play dress-up every single day of my life, have my dream fiance, and dream baby, you know?”
The editorial also features a selfie-on-selfie moment, with Kardashian taking a picture with North, while West documents the moment on a table, a “Bound 2-"inspired image with West kissing his fiance atop his black Lamborghini, and a shot of the family in, naturally, a private jet.
“It’s really interesting that we’re on the front lines of a few different concepts at the same time,” West says. “You’ve got the interracial thing; you have mega-media and mega-art crash; you have, you know, the Vogue-and-reality show combination. There’s a lot of new frontiers being broken in 2014… That’s the future, this melting pot, crashing sensibilities together...It’s really just about dopeness at the end of the day”
