How Kim Kardashian and Anna Wintour tamed a toddler

North West was a model of good behaviour during Kanye West’s fashion show. What’s behind that miracle?

 

North West sits on Kim Kardashian’s lap as her mother chats to Anna Wintour during Kanye West’s fashion show this week. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images North America

Have Mesdames Kimberly Kardashian and Victoria Beckham ever considered writing child-rearing manuals?

I only ask because of their amazing ability to get their toddlers to sit silently in the front row of fashion shows, for which I am given to understand there is always a modishly long wait, and which aren’t typically viewed with childlike wonder by anyone other than professional fashion critics.

It seems to have been Victoria who started this trend, with little Harper seated on the front row for Mummy’s shows since infancy. She has now been followed by two-year-old North West, who sat on Kim’s knee during Kanye West’s New York fashion show this week. Yet not once did I see Kim issuing a threat we all know she wasn’t going to follow through on, or getting drawn into a desperate negotiation involving sweets, or hissing: “Please, I will literally buy you an entire toyshop if you just do this one thing for me.”

Maybe it’s because they always make them sit next to Vogue editor Anna Wintour, whose aura looks as if it could freeze a child more swiftly than a joint offensive between Cruella de Vil and the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Or maybe the wall opposite is actually a giant screen playing a narcotising episode of In the Night Garden. Either way, enquiring minds want to know.