In a new New York Magazine article on NBA Wives Vanessa Bryant comes across very self aware of her position asTHE numero uno NBA wife and overlooked Kobe’s notorious serial cheating as the deal breaker in their marriage but instead focused on the fact that he better win a championship ring every season.
Speaking like she is from old money Vanessa explains why she doesn’t carry a Birkin (peep how she has the specifications of bags down to a science)..it’s so common now & new money now. But instead she rocks something that not everyone has.
I’m not really a handbag person anymore,” says Kobe Bryant’s wife, Vanessa. “I’ve collected Birkin bags, Chanel 2.55 jumbo flap bags, and the Marc Jacobs Stephen Sprouse collection for Louis Vuitton since I was a teenager. But now, as they say, everyone and their mom is buying a Birkin or a regular size 2.55 bag in black, taupe, or beige. I’ve been sticking to a magenta suede Proenza Schouler bag.”
Vanessa is going to keep doing her, not giving a single f!ck that she is labeled a ice queen
“I thought things would go away, if you don’t feed into the b.s., and no one would think about you,” says Bryant, sitting on a black horseshoe-shaped couch on the palazzo outside of her pastel Newport Coast mansion, the Pacific spread beneath her, a Pomeranian named Gucci at her feet. “Now I realize I do have to talk about certain things. Still, I don’t like the limelight. There’s a lot of good you can do with fame, like creating awareness for foundation, but a lot of negativity comes along with it.”
The status of her marriage
“Um,” she says, “yes. We’re working on things.”
On why it’s good to be Mrs.Kobe Bryant instead of the ex Mrs. Bryant.
As the sun shines on her diamond bangles, a Christmas present, as well as a diamond ring that’s a whopping 25 carats overall, a Valentine’s Day present—“Everyone my jeweler talked to was afraid of tension-setting it for me, but he finally found someone who wasn’t worried about cracking the stone,” she says—Bryant talks about her fashion, which she loves (at a basketball game, she once wore a T-shirt with the words FASHIONABLE MOTHERFUCKER in Gothic font on the front).
There is no beef with Khloe
Everything is false,” she says. “Khloé was at my 29th birthday. I don’t get involved in the drama. I’ve been with Kobe since I was 17, so I’ve seen plenty of players, and plenty of wives, come and go. It wouldn’t benefit me whatsoever to have an issue with any of them, whether they were a girlfriend, or a wife, a person-of-a-month, or … you know.
Vanessa is fully aware that her status as Queen Bee NBA wife gives her special privileges.
And I think that’s why the Lakers as an organization give me the access that I have, that other wives don’t have.” She talks about the tunnel on the way to the locker room that she stands in to give Kobe a kiss after games, the one that cameras always pan to. “If you notice, I am the only one allowed in that tunnel,” says Bryant. “I don’t like standing outside and giving him a kiss in front of all the cameras. So I stand in there to get away from them. But then the cameras end up following. And if the girls are there, sometimes, that’s their kiss good night for Daddy, and when he comes home, they’re asleep.”
More on why it is better to be Mrs. Kobe Bryant than the ex Mrs. Bryant
Bryant is in the process of packing her Alexander McQueen blazers, Chanel and Rick Owens leather jackets, ¬Giuseppe Zanotti “no heel” ankle booties, dark denim J-Brand skinnies, the new Louis Vuitton polka-dot scarves, and red patent Louboutin Pigalle spiked ballerina flats for the Olympic Games. “I plan to wear the flats with my red blazer, white T-shirt, and skinnies to support Team U.S.A.,” she says. She loves high heels—she has more of them in her closet than flats or sneakers, though she lives a pretty casual lifestyle—and owns a pair of Louboutin’s Marie Antoinette shoes, a pink confection with embroidery throughout by Jean-Francois Lesage (price tag: $6,295). “Her head is hanging on the ankle strap,” she says about the shoe.
Aware of how shallow she sounds, she tries to flip the script..saying she is basically just a mom
Bryant hesitates when asked too many questions about fashion, though. “I think people imagine that I sit at home with all the time in the world to do my hair and makeup, but that’s certainly not the case,” she says. “I’m up at 6:30 in the morning with my kids. I’m taking them wherever they need to go.” She doesn’t use a nanny—“That’s the way I was raised”—and says that she has never missed a sports game or practice of her daughters, 6 and 9. This afternoon, she’s checking on the portable nebulizer her daughter uses for her asthma to take overseas. The medicines that doctors push for asthmatics make her uncomfortable, and she’s interested in starting a foundation for alternative treatments. “I’m not sure where she got asthma from, but I’m really careful,” she says. “When their dad’s over and he sprays deodorant, I ask him to go into another room. My youngest daughter has allergies to olive trees. We had twelve olive trees on this property, and after we took her to an allergist, I had them excavated.”
For her and her daughters NBA life isn’t all glamorous
Do her daughters like watching the games ?
No, not really,” she says. “It’s two and a half hours, and it’s their dad, and you have to think about their point of view—would your child want to sit there and watch either you or your spouse work?” Do you like it? “Oh, yes,” she says. “I love basketball. And I know what goes on behind the scenes, so I have a different perspective on things, but still, I do.
Why Kobe being away from home better= a championship
I certainly would not want to be married to somebody that can’t win championships. If you’re sacrificing time away from my family and myself for the benefit of winning championships, then winning a championship should happen every single year.”
On who she is inspired by fashion wise and getting Kobe to be more fashionable
“I’m inspired by Ann Miller and Monica Bellucci,” she says. “My mom dressed so ladylike, with high-waisted knee-length skirts, nylons, and long tailored coats, always on her way to work.” As far as Kobe’s style goes, “for the longest time I tried convincing Kobe that he should wear things a little more fitted,” she says. “And for years and years he was like, ‘I don’t feel comfortable, I feel like they rise.’ And now all of a sudden the stylist says it, and it makes sense.”
Vanessa reminisces about how it all began with Kobe
Bryant declines to get more personal, choosing instead to talk about how much she enjoys New York—“I looked for a place there, just for a quick vacation home for my kids, but we love staying at the Plaza”and about the old days, when she fell in love with Kobe. They met after he saw her at a video shoot; she was only a senior in high school. “He’d come to school to get me in a black Mercedes, and flood the school with roses,” she says softly. “My curfew was 10 p.m., and he got done with practice at 2 p.m., so that’s how we’d see each other.”
They scheduled their wedding right before the playoffs, to throw the media off, and she’s proud that pictures were never published of their wedding. “I was 18 and a half, and I remember requesting a dress without flowery lace or tulle,” she says. “Vera Wang designed what she called a ¬glamazon-mermaid gown for me, with fabric-covered buttons down the back.” These days, the dress is stored in her cedar closet, in the exact same condition. “I love it,” she says. “It’s perfect.”
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