Kim Kardashian Had Knockoff Donald Judd Furniture in Her Office—and She’s Being Sued for It
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Kim Kardashian is being sued by the Judd Foundation, the nonprofit that represents the late artist Donald Judd’s legacy, for touting fake Judd office furniture in a promotional video.
It started with a since-deleted 2022 YouTube video that featured Kardashian touring the newly renovated Skkn by Kim (Kardashian’s beauty company) offices in California. It’s minimalist and sparsely furnished, drenched in varying renditions of blushing beige. She takes the viewer through the sprawling 40,000-square-foot space, from the theater to the kitchen to glam rooms. She pauses in the kitchen, where two long tables sit parallel to one another. “If you guys are furniture people, because I’ve really gotten into furniture lately,” she says, “these Donald Judd tables are really amazing and totally blend in with the seats.”
She’s referring to two Judd designs, La Mansana Table 22 and Chair 84. Except they aren’t Donald Judd pieces but instead dupes that were built by a company named Clements Design, according to the Donald Judd Foundation. “Consumers who watched the video or read the media coverage were misled to believe Ms. Kardashian’s tables and chairs were authentic Donald Judd pieces,” the nonprofit wrote in a complaint.
According to the filing, the Judd Foundation reached out to Kardashian’s team right after the video was posted in 2022. Her spokesperson responded with an apology, offering to update the caption with a retraction about the furniture’s provenance. But the Judd Foundation wanted the video deleted, the offending Clements Design furniture destroyed, and Kardashian to issue a public statement. That still hasn’t happened, and so they filed a lawsuit against the celebrity on Wednesday. The video, which has since received more than 3.6 million views, was taken down shortly after.
“We don’t want to be mixed up with Kim Kardashian. We respect what she does, but we don’t want to be involved with this,” a lawyer for the Judd Foundation told the New York Times. The foundation is also accusing Clements Design of trademark and copyright infringement. The petitioned settlement amount has not yet been made public.
The authentic table, available in a variety of wood materials, boasts a price tag of about $90,000—with complementary chairs that cost $9,000 each. Just three authentic copies of the table have been sold in the past 15 years, and more than 350 chairs have been sold in that same time frame, according to the foundation. “The furniture is integral to our financial stability,” Rainer Judd, the artist’s daughter and the president of his foundation, told the New York Times, adding that revenue from the pieces makes up nearly half of the organization’s earned income.
The lawsuit against Kardashian isn’t the first time the foundation has brought in attorneys to protect the legacy of Judd, who, before dying in 1994, fiercely protected the authenticity of his creations. In 2022, the foundation sued two art galleries for leaving permanent oily fingerprints on one of his sculptures. It is also firm on prohibiting customers from using the designer’s furniture for “marketing and promotional purposes.”
ELLE DECOR has reached out to Kardashian’s representatives, Clements Design, and the Judd Foundation for comment.
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