The Strict Makeup Rule Kim Kardashian Had To Follow When She Was With Kanye West

Every marriage requires a little compromise, and Kim Kardashian was willing to make a few changes to please Kanye "Ye" West after she tied the knot with the "Heartless" hitmaker in 2014. For one thing, Ye wasn't as keen on filming "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" as his now-ex-wife and her family members, so when he was willing to appear on-camera, Kardashian let him decide which footage should be left on the cutting room floor. "He knows that I'm really protective of him," Kardashian told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. "He doesn't like to film everything. It's not his show."

One infamous Ye scene that made the cut showed the rapper having a fit over the waist-snatching outfit that Kardashian wore to the Met Gala in 2019. "A corset is a form of underwear, it's hot, for who though?" Ye complained on "KUWTK" (via People). "You are my wife and it affects me when pictures are too sexy." During the 2018 BoF West Summit, Kardashian revealed that her controlling ex also emptied out her closet because he hated her style so much. "I probably had 250 pairs of shoes and when we were done cleaning it out, I had two pairs left and I cried," she recalled, per ET. Ye later refilled Kardashian's closet with designer apparel, and presumably footwear, of his own choosing.

Ye clearly didn't subscribe to a "less is more" philosophy when it came to what Kardashian wore, but what about her makeup?

Kanye West reportedly expected Kim Kardashian to follow certain rules while she was married to him. "He likes her to be natural and has demanded that she wear less makeup — unless she's going to a big event," a source told Life & Style. Kardashian confirmed that Ye had a say in her beauty look during Mario Dedivanovic's The Master Class in 2019. "He will come in and be like, 'You know your blush is a little heavy,'" Kardashian said (via People). She also revealed that he's not a fan of one popular beauty trend: using lip liner to draw outside the natural lip line.

In fact, if Ye had his way, the "Black Skinhead" rapper apparently would have preferred to only see Kardashian's natural skin. "I would wear make-up 24/7 if I could, but he likes me without it," Kardashian said during the 2016 Vogue 100 Festival, per the Mirror. 

Getting Kardashian to completely ditch her cosmetics was a tall order; she had KKW Beauty products to promote, after all, and in a 2016 video on her website (via People), she revealed that her daily beauty routine was a two-hour process at the time. However, after she shifted to hawking her SKKN skincare products, Kardashian's views on makeup became more aligned with her ex-husband's. "I don't wear as much makeup now as I did now that my skin has improved," she said on the "Goop" podcast in 2023.

In a 2019 interview with E!, Kim Kardashian revealed that she and Kanye West had different opinions about their oldest daughter, North West, wearing makeup. At the time, North was 6 years old, and Kardashian said that she was allowing the little girl to experiment with lip color for special occasions. Ye was against this. "I kind of got in trouble for that," Kardashian revealed. "So, it's now no more makeup."

But, after Kardashian launched a joint TikTok account with North, it became evident that North was still playing with makeup. However, her skills had advanced far beyond simply applying lip color. During a 2022 interview with Allure, Kardashian revealed that she had hired a teacher to show North how to do special effects makeup, boasting, "She's really good at it. ... It's like wounds and blood and tons of stuff." North began using TikTok to show off what she learned, making her mouth disappear behind a piece of scarred-up fake flesh in one creepy video. In a 2022 appearance on the "Hollywood Unlocked" podcast, Ye complained about his daughter's social media stardom and continued use of cosmetics. "I feel like it's them poking the bear or trying to antagonize me," he said. So when North used her makeup skills to make herself look like her dad's mini-me in a TikTok video that included a Kardashian cameo, they were totally trolling Ye, right?