Sundance: Kim K. Settling Beef With Antifur Folks?

The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star reveals she's having second thoughts about wearing fanimal pelts

By Marc Malkin Jan 20, 2009 10:37 PMTags
Kim Kardashian, 50 CentGustavo Caballero/Getty Images

Kim Kardashian may be close to giving up fur.

The E! reality star tells me that she began thinking about losing her animal pelt wardrobe last month when PETA released an "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ad featuring her sister Khloé in the nude.

"It's baby steps for me," Kim told me at 50 Cent's party at the Vitaminwater House, where she arrived in a fur-trimmed coat and enjoyed braised beef short ribs from the One Group. "I haven't bought anything new since Khloé did the ad."

Even Kim's boyfriend, football star Reggie Bush, gives her a hard time about fur. The two were at Sundance last year when they drove past an animal rights protest in front of a fur store. "I was wearing a fur vest, and he was like, 'This is humiliating. I can't go out with you,'" Kim remembered. "And then we were driving past the protest and he was rolling down the window and screaming, 'She's in here. She's in here.'"

Other celebrity Sundancing highlights include:

  • Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey hit the festival to promote I Love You Phillip Morris, a gay romance in which they star as lovers. So how'd the man-on-man smoochin' go down? "It was very nice," McGregor told me after being honored on Sunday with the Ray-Ban Visionary Award. "He's a very sweet kisser—tender, yet firm."
  • Robin Williams may have hit Kari Feinstein's Style Lounge gifting suite, but he didn't take home any swag. He was about to scoop up a new computer from MelroseMAC but quickly decided to donate it to Mekhi Phifer's charity, The Vine Group USA.
  • Susan Sarandon, however, picked up plenty, including eco-friendly light dimmers from Lutron for her new apartment in New York. She also grabbed a Retro Sport by Reebok Giants sweatshirt for her son.
  • While Paris Hilton did party it up at Sundance, she was showing at least some selflessness. She donated $100,000 to Scott Lazerson's Interface Foundation during a Vida Tequila-sponsored Bon Appétit dinner for Nigel Barker and the documentary A Sealed Fate and offered to be the face of Marnie Rocks Beading Center, a children's cancer advocacy group.
  • Sister Nicky proved be the festival's fastest swagster. I'm told she filled four shopping bags at the Sephora Beauty Lounge with makeup from Givenchy and clothing from Owl's Lab boutique in a mere 20 minutes.
  • Just call her the snow queen: Emma Roberts, in town to promote Lymelife, headed over to the Oakley house for snowboarding lessons. "She was really good," said a fellow snowboarder. "The pros were really impressed with her."
  • The MySpace café was, once again, a hit with its free grilled cheese and fries for VIPs, including Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Ben Affleck.
  • Denise Richards wasn't too happy being trailed by the paparazzi as she made her way up Main Street to the Rock Band Lounge. When the E! reality star refused to lift up her head for pics, her handler snapped at the overeager shutterbugs, "It's because you're rude."
  • Director Rob Epstein encouraged people at a Prop 8 panel discussion at GLAAD's Queer Lounge to take a lesson from the late Harvey Milk in trying to defeat antigay measures. "He understood there had to be a very well-grounded, well-organized grassroots campaign," said Epstein, who won the first of his two Oscars for the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk.
  • An Education appears to be the big-buzzed movie of the festival. "I looooved it," one film exec cooed.
  • The opening night flick, Mary and Max, a Claymated movie starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette, was pretty well-received, but does it have an audience? "It's just really dark and depressing," said one insider, echoing most everyone I spoke to who has seen it.
  • You'd think homeowners in the area would have learned by now that renting out their places for festival parties is a risky business. I hear partygoers caused $35,000 in damage to one such mansion. That includes a chandelier that, I'm told, was ripped from the ceiling by two gals locking lips while swinging from the lighting fixture in the wee hours of Sunday morning.