40+ Horrible Kardashian Hairstyles

The Kardashian-Jenners are an experimental bunch. Not content with boring colors or basic dos, this group of reality stars and makeup moguls has done pretty much everything. And of course, when you’re happy to try new things and push the boundaries, you’re bound to miss the mark a few times. We scoured red carpets, selfies, and photoshoots to find the worst ways the Kardashian-Jenners have ever styled their hair. Check out some of the most horrible Kardashian-Jenner hairstyles.

We start our list of horrible Kardashian-Jenner hairstyles with this appalling shot of a young Kim Kardashian.

Kim posted this picture of herself from a photoshoot with afro style hair alongside the caption, “Definitely a new look for me.” In response, singer Jennifer Hudson reportedly said, “She ain’t nothin’ but common.” Savage!

Obviously, there are worse hair looks than this on this list. However, considering the Kardashian-Jenners are pros when it comes to wigs, we don’t think this one makes the cut. Kendall wore this long blonde wig while walking for Balmain in 2016.

Amusingly, while Kendall wore this blonde wig with dark roots, model pal Gigi Hadid wore a brunette wig. With their natural hair colors switched, the two looked like inverted versions of each other. Anyway, we think this wig is stringy. It’s a no from us.

At the beginning of their careers, the Kardashians weren’t invited to the high-profile Met Gala, In fact, Kim only got through the doors for her first Met Gala as Kanye West’s plus one. Years later, Khloé has still not attended, though the Jenners are always there with bells on.

In 2019, the Met Gala theme was “camp,” and Kris Jenner went all out with a floor-length tulle opera coat. She paired the look with a blonde bob — supposedly requested by Kylie. Sorry, Kris — we hate it.

Considering we struggle to deal with Kendall Jenner’s Vogue afro, we can barely even look at Khloé’s Diana Ross monstrosity. The Good American founder wore this huge blonde curly wig to the singer’s 75th birthday party, and faced criticisms that it looked like an afro.

As with other occasions of cultural insensitivity, people were mad that Khloé turned to this look for a one-night-only bit of fun. Has anyone told Khloé that you don’t need to dress like someone when you attend their birthday party?

Now, this is a crime against braids. In 2020 Khloé posted this picture of herself with her hair in pink cornrow braids, captioned “Love; always.” Alas, the picture didn’t exactly inspire love from irritated onlookers.

Yet again, Khloé wears a protective hairstyle for afro-textured hair in order to look “cool.” This is referred to as “blackfishing,” where people try to appear African-American on social media. Despite the cultural issues with this particular hairstyle, we also think it looks awful.

Viewers of Keeping Up with the Kardashians cringed when Kim stepped into a recording studio to record her first – and only – single, “Jam (Turn it Up).” The hilariously named tune came about from Kim meeting producer The-Dream and consulting then-friend Kanye West for advice.

Hilariously, Kim has since said that recording the song is the biggest regret of her life. If that’s because she had to don this hideous red and black wig for the video, we totally understand.

Kim Kardashian has been through plenty of hair transformations, from straight jet black locks to this platinum blonde bob. When the star unveiled this look at Paris Fashion Week in 2015, people were quick to make comparisons to Harry Potter villain Draco Malfoy.

The length, shape, and color of this cut are reminiscent of the snotty fictional character, and so, this hairstyle birthed a thousand memes. Of course, to each their own, but we prefer Kim with dark locks.

As you might expect, quite a lot of these hairstyles are very culturally insensitive. No matter how many times people explain cultural appropriation to the Kardashian-Jenners, it just doesn’t seem to stick. The bottom line is that these women want to wear whatever styles they like.

Model Kendall Jenner wore this colorful dreadlock monstrosity for the Marc Jacobs New York Fashion Week show in 2016. Friend and fellow model Gigi Hadid also strutted her stuff in this insensitive wig.

You won’t see much of eldest sibling Kourtney Kardashian on this list. With her well-styled — and safe — dark brown hair, Kourtney rarely treads into full blown horrible hair territory. While the star has played with highlights, bangs, and wigs in the past, she always looks pretty great.

However, we’re not fans of this matching femme fatale style look worn by Kourtney and Kim in 2016. This short bang, dark lip look was for a photoshoot, and it’s just a little bit ick.

Youngest Kardashian-Jenner sibling Kylie Jenner is known for her brightly colored wigs and experimental hairstyles. Unfortunately, this includes lots of culturally insensitive styles. While this red braided wig might look good, it shouldn’t really be sitting on Kylie Jenner’s head.

Basically, it’s considered insensitive for white people to wear hairstyles that are associated with another group. This is to do with power and respect, where Kylie should respect that these protective hairstyles aren’t really for her.

Obviously we can’t talk about horrible Kardashian-Jenner hairstyles without looking to momager Kris Jenner. Of course, this particular soccer mom-style hairdo can be blamed on the time, but that doesn’t make it any less horrible.

What we have here is an awkward length of black hair — not quite a bob, not quite a short cut — that’s been flicked out using hair straighteners. The bangs are swooped to the side, because why not? And, naturally, the whole thing is set with a ton of hairspray.

Here’s another casualty of the 2000s that we have to include on our list of horrible Kardashian-Jenner hairstyles. It’s not like Kim Kardashian to appear on a red carpet with anything other than perfectly styled hair (even if we hate the style), so it’s bizarre to see her with this crumpled, bumpy ponytail.

We’ve all worn this style before, but it’s usually in the comfort of our own home or while we work out. Why didn’t someone run over that thing with a paddle brush?

Sigh. This is the first of what will be many culturally insensitive hairstyles from Khloé Kardashian. The reality star can’t seem to get enough of protective styles for afro hair, even though she doesn’t have it. Again, the issue here is that Khloé tries on these looks to seem cool, but doesn’t have to deal with the other parts of being African American.

When she posted these pictures, Khloé wrote “Bantu babe” as the caption. After backlash, she deleted the snap and reposted it with a new caption.

And here we are again. This time we have Kendall Jenner wearing cornrows after a vacation to Jamaica with sister Kylie and friend Hailey Baldwin. The same sort of criticism applies to this style as the other culturally insensitive looks we’ve covered so far.

When communities have to protest in order to wear their hair in these styles to work or school, it’s a slap in the face to have Kendall Jenner wear them to look cool. As always, this look caused a major social media backlash.

Can you guess what the problem here is? You got it, it’s cultural appropriation! Even though some of the Kardashian-Jenners have mixed race kids, it’s still not cool for everyone in the family to get in on a new hairstyle just because it looks good.

We’ll say it again — these hairstyles are protective styles for afro-textured hair, and these women don’t have that. Khloé posted this picture of herself and niece Penelope wearing matching braids in 2016. North and Kim also wore the style.

Well, what do we have here? As a catwalk model, Kendall Jenner is dressed up in all sorts of Avant Garde looks. However, those don’t tend to look so good in any other context than on a catwalk, or in the pages of a glossy magazine.

This is Kendall walking in the Marc Jacobs Fall/Winter 2016 show with weird black finger waves and bleached brows. Jenner has revealed on her website that her least favorite part of modeling is being asked to mess with her brows.

Kim Kardashian has never shied away from a fashion moment, and she really went for it in 2018 with this lime green Lambo look. The star stepped out with a waist length lime green wig that matched her Lamborghini. That’s just what Kim Kardashian does, guys.

While we admire the ridiculousness of this entire look, we just can’t endorse this hair. To be honest, we might feel better if Kim’s skin wasn’t sprayed in such an orange shade. This is an assault on the eyes.

You know, there are much worse hairstyles on this list than this brassy blonde wig, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to give this one a pass. Kylie wore this look to Cosmopolitan‘s 50th Birthday Celebration in 2015, but we think she could have done better.

Kylie gets her wigs from hairstylist Tokyo Stylez, who’s also her personal hairstylist. Jenner found the wigmaker on Instagram and they’ve gone on to make wigs for Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, and Megan Thee Stallion.

Much like her siblings, Kim Kardashian is no stranger to cultural appropriation. While she was rocking a blonde wig in 2015 after the birth of son Saint, the reality star styled her hair in long platinum blonde braids.

While braided hair doesn’t “belong” exclusively to one racial group, it’s a long standing tradition for African American people. That’s why when Kim called this style “boxer braids” and soaked up all the credit, people got pretty irritated.

And we’re back with some more tone deaf braids. While some people might think it’s petty to care so much about hairstyles, it’s actually a huge issue with lots of historical context. Let’s be honest — people wouldn’t be so mad about cornrows unless it was a real issue for them, right?

Khloé Kardashian posted this image of herself working out with long braids. While we don’t begrudge anyone a nice plait, Khloé is clearly trying to lean into a different kind of look.

The Kardashians like to dress up, both in their everyday lives and for a bit of fun. Throughout the course of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, we’ve seen the family scurry off to their own stylists only to return later with a full-on costume.

Around the time that the momager debuted a platinum blonde do on Twitter, she tried on this shaggy blonde wig in an episode of KUWTK. Doesn’t she look just like Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall in this wig?

Let’s be totally clear about this — we’re not against wigs, or multicolored hair. In fact, we love them. However, sometimes Kylie Jenner does miss the mark, such as with this powder pink wavy wig.

The reality star wore this pink wig while sitting front row at the Vera Wang 2016 show. Watching her sister walk, Kylie wore this Tokyo Stylez wig with a mixture of her own Lip Kit shades on her lips. We get what she was going for, but it’s not right for us.

Poor Kendall Jenner keeps getting hit with the weirdest high fashion hairstyles. This particularly blunt bob is another Marc Jacobs look, this time from his 2014 New York Fashion Week show. And look — Kendall had to bleach her brows for this look too.

It’s worth pointing out that Kendall Jenner’s hair is rarely horrible outside of high fashion catwalks and photo shoots. Ordinarily, the star sticks with groomed, glossy dos in her signature shade of chocolate brown, with the occasional blonde bombshell mixed in.

Here’s another fancy dress look where Kris Jenner got glammed up to look like nightmare boss Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada. Some might argue that Kris looks pretty fetching here, and we don’t totally disagree, but Kris Jenner isn’t a blonde. We won’t have it!

When Kris appeared on KUWTK dressed as the fictional character, her elder daughters decided to join her and show her how it’s done. Cue lots of oversized sunglasses, fur coats, and snarky put-downs.

Here’s a younger Khloé Kardashian sporting some pretty crunchy looking ringlets. You know, this style could be worse — at least it isn’t racist — but it’s really a casualty of the time period. Back in the 2000s, all of us stuffed out hair with mousse and went to town with the diffuser. Just look at Kourtney.

Poor Khloé got a lot of hate on social media in the early days, particularly because she was taller and less petite than her elder siblings. Now, she’s pretty unrecognizable from this picture.

We did say that Kourtney wouldn’t appear on this list much, but she’s not getting away with this horrible hairstyle. Obviously this is another entry from the early days, when people wore cream lace, tons of fake tan, and a slick of nude lipstick. It’s the early 2000s!

It looks like Kourtney stuffed all of her hair into a giant bun for this look, and then slipped a gold, jeweled headband on for good luck. Sadly, this look is not it.

This is the only Caitlyn entry on this list, as the star tends to keep her hair in pretty good shape. However, the former Olympic athlete did post this picture of herself sporting some long blonde locks in 2020. She captioned the picture, “Do blondes have more fun? Secret project today…keep you posted.”

This picture prompted speculation that Jenner was joining the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. However, executive producer Andy Cohen suggested that we’d be more likely to see Kris Jenner on the show.

Shortly after Tristan Thomas cheated on Khloé Kardashian, the star had to show her face for the opening of British e-tailer Pretty Little Thing. For the event, Khloé wore one of the brand’s knitted sweatshirts, along with wet look leggings and black stilettos.

Khlo paired this last minute look with a wet look blonde bob, and we’re just not here for it. We know she was going through some heavy duty personal issues at the time, but we just can’t give this hairstyle the seal of approval.

We’ve already seen some culturally insensitive braids on this list, and we’re back with more. In 2015, Hunger Games actress Amandla Stenberg took issue with Kylie Jenner’s cornrows, writing, “When u appropriate black features and culture but fail to use ur position of power to help black Americans by directing attention towards ur wigs instead of police brutality or racism.”

Kylie responded with a snarky comment about the pair’s shared friend Jaden Smith, and seemingly didn’t learn a thing.

Can you even deal with Kendall Jenner’s afro style hairdo for Vogue? Seriously, we can’t believe this was even allowed to happen. Even without the obvious cultural appropriation issues, this is just a hairdo that’s bound to attract controversy.

Kendall wore this very teased bouffant on the cover of Vogue (that’s right – the cover!) in 2018, but onlookers thought it looked too much like an afro. The magazine eventually clarified that the hair was inspired by Edwardian Gibson Girl hair.

When Kylie Jenner started to transform from skinny, thin-lipped tween to edgy, full-lipped teen, the world paid attention. At the time, KUWTK featured storylines on how cool Kylie’s style was, and viewers watched as Kim scrolled through her younger sister’s Tumblr.

While we’re generally fans of Kylie’s colorful wigs, we think this blunt blue bob missed the mark. Paired with a dark shade of Kylie’s liquid lipstick, this particular wig just isn’t doing it for us. What can we say?

Back in the 2000s, we all went a bit wild with hair straighteners. Listen — we’d spent so many years without them that we just couldn’t help but iron our locks to a super straight crisp. What’s the point unless it’s poker straight, right?

Clearly, this picture of Kim Kardashian comes from the super straight hair era. By the looks of things, while we were busy clamping our GHDs together, Kim Kardashian was doing the same. And don’t think we haven’t noticed that dress.

One of the issues with white stars wearing styles associated with communities of color is that they’re perceived differently for doing so. For example, when actress Zendaya wore her hair in dreadlocks on the red carpet in 2015, presenter Giuliana Rancic commented that it looked like she smelled of patchouli.

However, when Kylie Jenner sported locs for Teen Vogue, the style was considered edgy and fashionable. This double standard is the reason many people are protective over their own styles and trends.

We’re all about fashion risks, and we’ll stand behind all sorts of brightly colored Kardashian-Jenner wigs. However, what we won’t stand for is basic looks like this one on stars as dynamic as Kim Kardashian. This bronde (a combination of brown and blonde) ombre look does nothing for the star, especially in this yellow-gold outfit.

This picture was taken in the weeks following North’s birth in 2013. Kimmy had just become a mom for the first time so perhaps she was trying something new.

We must say that we absolutely despise this next hair look. Though Kris Jenner does look pretty in this bun and bangs combo, it’s just too far from her usual no-nonsense, dark brown short do.

Jenner debuted this look in 2019 on Instagram, with the caption, “Today’s Sunday Glam.” Fans were quick to point out the celebrity momager’s resemblance to her famous children, especially Kim. Thankfully, this look didn’t last long, and Kris went back to her usual short locks shortly after.

When Kim Kardashian attended the 2018 MTV Movie and TV Awards with her hair in Fulani braids, she was faced with the usual criticism. People were frustrated to see the Armenian-American celebrity wearing a hairstyle that originates from the Fulan people of West Africa.

On this occasion, Kim K actually defended her decision to wear her hair in a protective style. The reality star claimed that she wanted to match her biracial daughter, North. Sorry, Kim — we’re not buying it.

From one case of 2020 cultural appropriation to another, now we’re onto Kylie Jenner’s much-talked-about blonde twists. Kylie posted this picture of herself to Instagram in 2020, and quickly deleted it after facing backlash from fans.

Apparently, this image is an outtake from a 2019 photoshoot for Paper magazine. Kylie claimed the look was inspired by Gwen Stefani, but considering the No Doubt singer’s own history with cultural appropriation, we’re not so sure that was a great decision.

You didn’t think we’d forget about Kris Jenner’s 1980s hair, did you? Here we have the momager with a full-on ’80s bouffant and a truly perplexing striped, puffy shouldered dress. At the bottom, we have a young Kourtney sporting a fetching set of bangs.

We have no excuse for what went on with hair in the 1980s. Really, we should be grateful that Kris Jenner didn’t go for a perm like many other women of the decade.

The Kardashian-Jenner gals are fans of a high pony. The severe look can have face lifting side effects, and it can make someone look like a total boss. Our point is, we get it.

However, sometimes Khloé Kardashian takes things just a little too far. She’s the sibling most likely to have the longest nails, the highest heels, and the biggest hoops — so, of course, she sported this skyscraping ponytail. Sorry Khlo, this one isn’t for us.

We’re back to the ’00s with Kim Kardashian’s Reggie Bush era black brown ringlets. The couple got together in 2007 and fans watched their relationship blossom on KUWTK. However, the reality star and the professional footballer called it quits in 2009.

While hair straighteners were a big deal during this time, curling wands were also big news. Kim’s hair is a little too crispy here, and doesn’t have enough volume on top. Nowadays, she would never step out in this particular style.

As we’ve said, we take no issue with Kylie Jenner’s multicolored wigs. However, that doesn’t mean we like them all. While Kylie’s colorful hair started off with her famous teal dip-dye, this teal number doesn’t do it for us at all.

Compared with her other colored wigs, this one just isn’t sitting properly on the star’s head. On top of that, her makeup is too neutral for such a strong hair color. Personally, we would have gone with a slick of something bolder.

You didn’t think you’d seen all of Khloé Kardashian’s culturally insensitive hairstyles, did you? The Revenge Body host attended younger sister Kylie’s birthday party with these purple cornrows in 2021. These braids have purple extensions woven in, with a purple plait at the nape of the neck.

According to Khloé’s stylist, the star wanted something “fun and different.” As we’ve said, these styles aren’t just fun for other people — they’re a way to protect afro-textured hair.

What’s more annoying than a white celebrity wearing cornrows? It’s when they don’t even call them cornrows! Kim Kardashian wore her hair in the protective style in 2018 and then enraged onlookers by calling the style, “Bo Derek braids.”

While actress Bo Derek did indeed wear the style in 1979 movie 10, people of color have been wearing it for much, much longer than that. Hey Kim — if you’re going to steal, then at least give credit to the right people.

Remember Khloé’s extremely high ponytail? Well, this is a similar sort of thing but with a half-up, half-down do. Each to their own and all that, but we reckon Khloé’s stylist could have taken her pony down just a touch. She’ll be touching the ceiling with it that way!

Khloé wore her hair in this style when she appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2018. While she was giving off a pregnancy glow at the time, this OTT hairstyle distracted from everything.

Apart from her many insensitive hairstyles, Kylie Jenner tends to nail it when it comes to aesthetics. Despite this, we just can’t get on board with her wet-look bangs from 2017 New York Fashion Week.

Kylie wore this style to the Alexander Wang show, but we think we’d prefer it if her hair was just dry. Yeah, yeah — wet look and slicked-back hair is a major trend, but who wants to look like they got stuck in the rain on the way to the party?