Kandi Burruss is standing by the quirky look she wore for the Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 13 reunion.
The ensemble went viral ahead of the weekend as the ladies came together to film and close out the season. While her co-stars opted for glamorous gowns of the one-shoulder, heavily sequined variety, she was the only one who went all out to be different. But as it turns out, she wasn’t being that different, because the cast was informed of the theme and she just happened to be the only one to follow it closely.
“Everybody was trying to roast me but I was actually in the theme of what they told us the reunion was supposed to be, which was — what I was told was it was supposed to be burlesque, Fifty Shades of Grey, dungeon…whatever. So, clearly, I came dressed for that [laughs],” she said in an IG video about the look. She ended up trending on Twitter as people couldn’t understand what she was going for, theme or no theme. The ensemble was dungeon-y sex goddess, but the hair was ’50s pinup. Allow Kandi to make it make sense.
“The hair was inspired by Dita Von Teese, who is a extremely successful, well-known burlesque performer,” she said. “She always does those retro hairstyles so I decided to do the retro hair look because I didn’t want to do the same thing that we always do, which is your typical gown and curls for the girls, long hair or whatever it may be, ’cause I’ve already done it.”
Her co-stars didn’t stray too far away from the theme, going for black and sexy. But as you can see, no one wanted to do anything too risque, which left Kandi looking a bit unusual in comparison. Instead of showing up in latex, they showed a lot of leg here, some shoulder there, threw a few feathers in the mix, and that was about it:
Guess this is payback for Kandi cracking jokes about Eva Marcille’s hair from Cynthia Bailey’s wedding. As she too learned, sometimes attempts at self-expression don’t always receive a round of applause, and when that happens, you have to either stand by the look unapologetically…or go ahead and take that L. She preferred the former.
What did you make of Kandi’s reunion ensemble? Check out a few hilarious reactions to it below: