Issue 29.

All Grede, No Guilt: Emma Grede, the Kardashian machine's mastermind wants to sell you on her 3-hour parenting rule. Plus, the evolution of the corporate grifter

All Grede, No Guilt

Behind every billion-dollar Kardashian brand is Emma Grede.

The SKIMS co-founder and Good American CEO, who has worked with the family for over a decade, clearly missed the memo that providing a parenting opinion in 2026 is more taboo than asking someone how much money they make.

Although she’ll happily also ask you that—and offer up her own financials in return (an estimated USD $400 million, according to Fortune).

Miss Rachel in a power suit and heels, the entrepreneur has provided parenting influencers with enough content to last a month, courtesy of her new book Start With Yourself.

“Grede calls herself a ‘max three-hour mum,’ per the WSJ.

After being with her kids from 9 to 12 on weekends, ‘I am done with these four,’ she says, heading off to activities that ‘fill my cup.’”

Before the privilege police arrive, Grede does acknowledge that this is all made possible by her family’s team of nannies, cleaners, plus a chef and chief of staff. As you do.

I can only imagine how frantic the newsroom at Mamamia must be right now, working out how many opinion pieces and podcast segments they want to dedicate to this.

Across social media, I’m anticipating mums on mini mics and comment sections whipped into a frenzy:

“She’s only saying this because she’s rich. Not all of us have the luxury of help!”

“I WON’T BE BUYING SKIMS AGAIN.” “

I feel for her kids—those poor things. They will barely know their mother.”

She doesn’t stop there, also criticising helicopter parenting and the pressure women put on themselves to be all things, all the time, at once.

“Women are drained and exhausted. To put upon yourself that every waking minute is oriented around your kids is not a way to live.”

Image: Porter Magazine

Grede is no fool and knows exactly what she’s doing with comments like these. You don’t work in close proximity to Kris Jenner for over a decade and walk away with only a plastic surgeon recommendation.

These comments sit within a broader pitch for the book, billed as a “no-BS guide for anyone seeking meaningful success on their own terms,” aiming to “dismantle the lies women have been sold” about ambition and work-life balance.

“You’re going to have discomfort if you live up to your ambition. If you want to get paid what you deserve or make a lot of money, you’ve got to admit that to yourself.”

As a longtime follower of Grede, this is entirely on brand: unapologetic, unflinching, bold and rooted in honest tough love.

If Kris Jenner’s devil works hard, he’s almost certainly clocking a night shift for the 42-year-old, whose meteoric rise—from high school dropout and the daughter of a single mother in a rough East London neighbourhood—is entirely self-made and self-orchestrated.

I respect Emma’s success, work ethic and honest approach to cutting through the sea of sanctimonious rubbish in the self-help world. Even if I don’t agree with everything she says, she says the parts aloud that others with her same level of success and influence are afraid to say.

She is honest about ambition, money transparency and calls female founder culture on social media — think glamorous dinners and women in business events, you know the type — “mostly about ego-gratification.” Instead encouraging women to be more “transactional” and “honest about wealth aspirations.”

Of course, all of that will be lost in the chaos of the conversation her parenting comments will inevitably spark.

As a society, we seem to have forgotten how to disagree with someone without letting it colour our entire view of them.

Something tells me she won’t care.

She Grifts Hard For the Money

Another graduate of the Melissa Caddick School of Money Management.

Filling the washed-up ASICS sneaker void is Shannon Muldoon, a 38-year-old New York marketing executive facing court for spending over $400,000 of her employer’s money on designer handbags, five-star hotels, international flights and online shopping hauls.

Muldoon worked at food media company Food52, which makes the scale of the spending feel less like embezzlement and more like creative accounting with a side of delusion.

Image: Instagram

According to The Cut, she filed it all under “work expenses” from 2021-2023: $20,000 at Net-a-Porter in a single month, nearly $26,000 on flights, plus tropical wellness retreats, overseas trips, and a membership to a downtown influencer gym.

Her transformation did not go unnoticed.

“Her clothes started getting better; her nail art was crazy; she got a lot of Botox. You could just tell she was going through something,” a former colleague said.

“I would ask where she got a bag or a pair of shoes, and the number of times she said The Row shocked me.”

At least their $500 organic cotton T-shirts will come in handy when she’s scrubbing prison floors for 20 cents an hour.

Image: Instagram

Muldoon reportedly coded purchases as wardrobe for talent or advertising costs. A trick made easier by COVID, remote work and a carousel of C-suite reshuffles that let expenses slip quietly through the cracks. Total losses are now estimated in the millions.

Perhaps the most implausible detail of this entire story is that a content company in 2026 had that much money to begin with.

The corporate grifter is a time-honoured archetype: sticky fingers, unshakeable self-belief and the quiet conviction they can get away with a lifestyle boost courtesy of the company purse.

But the profile has evolved.

Today’s iteration feels less sexy, less cunning: more desperate, more delusional. A pale shadow of the 1920s white-collar criminal, when Ponzi schemes and bootlegged alcohol were dissected over cigarettes in speakeasies.

The only Panama hat in the room now is from Helen Kaminski, courtesy of Net-a-Porter and someone else’s money.

Keeping up with the Joneses is the millennial kryptonite: proximity to a life that feels just within reach, which is how we arrive at the modern grifter profile.

Women in their 30s, 40s or even 50s with a weakness for designer clothes, expensive travel and first-class airfares they couldn’t otherwise afford.

We only have to look at former friends Helen Rosamond and Rosemary Rogers, whose double grifting act saw them swindle $19 million out of NAB to see how this story ends.

Bizarrely, there is something relatable about this story.

Not the criminal activity, not the jail time, but the need for more. I know I’m not alone in wondering how far a strategic fall at Westfield might get me, or a non-threatening spin on the Disneyland teacups. Something minor with minimal recovery, but a nice little payout…

• Sometimes I have to break my ‘no hard news’ rule on Shallow to bring you a real-life event. Relax: no war, no daggy politicians.

  Instead, I insist you watch this heartwarming video of NASA astronauts onboard Artemis II, the first crew to fly to the moon in over 53 years. Try not to cry when they pay tribute to the late wife of one of the crew.

  I’ve been quietly nerding out about this mission. The Daily has done a great podcast on it if you’d like to join me in cosplaying bookish intellect.

• Is acne the new black? The buzz around Alix Earle’s acne-focused skincare line, Reale Actives and Rhode’s new pimple patches would suggest so. Earle’s line sold out shortly after launching last week and my favourite detail from Rhode’s spotwear set is this detail: “Designed by Justin Bieber.”

  I have many questions. …Did JB sketch his vision of a shroom-shaped pimple patch? Was he workshopping the perfect jellybean silhouette in the Rhode showrooms late at night?

  

  Alix Earle (left) and Hailey & Justin Bieber (right)

• The haters have been out in full force over Anna Wintour and Meryl Streep on the cover of US Vogue, ahead of The Devil Wears Prada 2 (April 30: put it in the diary). I love it: the styling, clothes, the cheesy social videos, the Annie Leibovitz images.

  

  US Vogue, May 2026 Issue

  Other thoughts:

  A. Meryl Streep is operating on a different linguistic plane
  B. Chloe Malle ( she wrote the intro to the piece) has an exceptional poker face

  Anna Wintour’s public profile has gone into overdrive since she “stepped down” last year… Chloe surely has a snarky group chat about this somewhere.

• Someone at Net-a-Porter deserves a raise. This email subject line made me laugh and raised an important question: is there an untapped demographic of people forced to attend an ex’s wedding out there?

  

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What are your thoughts on this week’s (skin) deep dives? Leave me a comment below!