As TikTok continues to cannibalize past trends at warp speed, we’ve simultaneously entered a period of ’00s renaissance and Tumblr-heyday resurgence. Proof? Kylie Jenner just dyed her hair cotton candy pink. The future is the past is the future.
KING KYLIE IS BACK pic.twitter.com/tegvYdWhg2
— Elle percentuali✨ (@supremanes) January 16, 2024
To understand why this is significant—and why Jenner’s comments are flooded with the phrase “King Kylie”—you have to go back to 2015, when she was dating rapper Tyga. At the time he went by King Gold Chains on social media, and as an act of solidarity, Jenner changed her social media profiles to say King Kylie. This was one year into the existence of Kylie Cosmetics, when the Avengers were still exciting and Coachella was still kind of cool. And Jenner was dyeing her hair a lot. So when fans saw her with pink locks (which Page Six thinks is a wig, FWIW), the phrase and the aesthetic immediately sprang to mind.
Kylie Jenner’s recent pink hair is just more evidence that 2014 is back pic.twitter.com/wj6jkiRRxl
— Hunter (@highendhomo) January 16, 2024
And make no mistake, Jenner is doing this for the nostalgia clicks. “hiiiii remember me,” she wrote on Instagram.
king kylie is back..2024 is the new 2014 pic.twitter.com/6eLFIwycL9
— popcultureangel (@lohanisgod) January 16, 2024
On TikTok she was even more pointed, captioning a video, “heard its 2014 vibes this year.” She set the video to the song “Suga Suga,” which is from 2003, but whatever.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Kris Jenner playbook can see that this is a blatant attempt to push (very speculative) tabloid stories of Timothée Chalamet thinking about dumping Kylie after the Golden Globes drama off the first page of Jenner’s Google News results, and our prediction is that it will work. And you know? Of all the things this family has done for attention, dressing up like it’s the old days is one of the better ones. Welcome back, King Kylie
