Vanessa Bryant and daughter Natalia were just two of the many stars who attended Gucci’s coveted Love Parade show in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
The wife of the late NBA legend Kobe Bryant exuded glamour in the label’s glitzy black jumpsuit and statement faux fur coat, as she posed for photos with Natalia, 18.
Natalia also stunned in the fashion house’s forest green Gucci blazer, which she teamed with a white T-shirt, light blue jeans and edgy black boots with chain detail.
Vanessa, 39, boosted her height with black boots and was primped to perfection with glossy brunette tresses and a glamorous makeup palette including a red lipShe embraced Natalia for a slew of photos on the runway,
with Natalia drawing attention to her chic beauty look, including a topknot and a glowing complexion. The mother and daughter duo were in great company with the event also attended by Gwyneth Paltrow, Sienna Miller, Lizzo, Miley Cyrus andMiley Cyrus .
Vanessa and Natalia looked to be having a ball on the night, taking to their respective Instagram pages to share several photos from the runway and front-row.
The sighting comes after it was ruled Kobe Bryant’s widow won’t have to undergo psychiatric testing for her lawsuit over graphic photos of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the basketball star, her 13-year-old daughter and others, a federal judge ruled Monday.
Los Angeles County sought to compel psychiatric evaluations for Vanessa Bryant and others to determine if they truly suffered emotional distress over photos of the crash scene and bodies that her lawsuit said were taken and shared by county sheriff’s deputies and firefighters.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles F. Eick said that the county’s motion to compel an evaluation was ‘untimely’. Bryant’s invasion-of-privacy lawsuit is scheduled to begin in February. Kobe Bryant, daughter Gianna and seven others were killed Jan.
26, 2020, when the helicopter they were aboard, on their way to a girls basketball tournament, crashed in the hills west of Los Angeles amid foggy weather. Federal safety officials blamed pilot error for the wreck.
Bryant’s lawsuit contends first responders, including firefighters and sheriff’s deputies, shared photographs of Kobe Bryant’s body with a bartender and passed around ‘gratuitous photos of the dead children, parents and coaches.’
Bryant, in a deposition, had said that ‘for the rest of my life I’m going to have to fear that these photographs of my husband and child will be leaked.’
The judge last week said the county sheriff and fire chief must give depositions in the case. Attorneys for the county had argued that Bryant had never seen the photographs and they weren’t shared publicly and wanted to determine whether she truly had suffered emotional distress.
They had sought to require Bryant and other family members of the people who were killed in the crash, including children, to undergo psychiatric evaluations as independent medical examinations.
Last month, Vanessa recounted the fateful events of January 26, 2020 in a deposition for her lawsuit against Los Angeles County. She said in the deposition that LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva vowed to keep the crash scene private moments after informing her that Kobe and Gianna were dead,
and that she deduced the grim condition of the bodies when she recovered the clothes they had been wearing. Under questioning from a county attorney, Vanessa said she first learned of the crash, which occurred around 9.45am, when her assistant knocked on the door about 11.30am and told her there had been a crash.
‘She told me that there was an accident and that there were five survivors,’ Vanessa testified from Newport Beach over Zoom on October 12, according to a transcript obtained by USA Today. ‘And I asked her if Gianna and Kobe were okay. And she said she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know.’
Hearing that there were survivors — which turned out not to be true, as all nine people aboard were killed instantly on impact — Vanessa said that she initially assumed Kobe and Gianna had survived.
But as she tried in vain to call her husband, notifications began to pop up on her phone, sharing condolences for Kobe’s death. ‘I was trying to call my husband back, and all these notifications started popping up on my phone, saying RIP Kobe. RIP Kobe. RIP Kobe,’ she said.
It was hours later before Vanessa officially learned from the sheriff that Kobe, 41, and Gianna, 13, had perished in the crash. She said that she rushed to an airport to try to take a helicopter to the crash scene, but was told that weather conditions would not permit flight.
Vanessa also revealed that she recovered the clothes Kobe and Gianna wore during the crash, out of concern that someone would take pictures of them. ‘They suffered a lot,’ Bryant said during the deposition, according to the New York Times.
‘And if their clothes represent the condition of their bodies, I cannot imagine how someone could be so callous and have no regard for them or their friends and just share the images as if they were animals on the street.’
‘The impact of the helicopter crash was so damaging, I just don’t understand how someone can have no regard for life and compassion, and, instead, choose to take that opportunity to photograph lifeless and helpless individuals for their own sick amusement,’ she said.
A charter helicopter was carrying Kobe, Gianna, and other youth basketball players and coaches from Orange County to Thousand Oaks when the pilot became disoriented in fog and crashed in Calabasas.
‘My life will never be the same without my husband and daughter,’ she said. Vanessa’s federal lawsuit contends that first responders, including firefighters and sheriff´s deputies, shared photographs of Kobe Bryant’s body with a bartender and passed around ‘gratuitous photos of the dead children, parents and coaches.’
She contends in the suit that she has experienced ‘severe emotional distress’ that has compounded the trauma of losing her husband and 13-year-old daughter, Gianna.
The lawsuit contends first responders, including firefighters and sheriff´s deputies, shared photographs of Kobe Bryant’s body with a bartender and passed around ‘gratuitous photos of the dead children, parents and coaches.’
The suit claims that deputies circulated the photos among themselves gratuitously, and that one displayed a photo on his phone to a bartender at Baja California Bar and Grill, who then loudly proclaimed to patrons and staff that he’d just seen an image of Kobe Bryant’s body.
Los Angeles County contends that, while the conduct was inappropriate, showing a photo to one member of the public does not constitute invasion of privacy. The county says that the photos were not shared with the media or posted on the internet, and thus were ‘not publicly disseminated.’
In her deposition, Vanessa said she pleaded with the Los Angeles County sheriff to make sure no one took photographs from the crash site, and he reassured that the area had been secured.
After Sheriff Alex Villanueva confirmed her husband, their teenage daughter, along with seven others, were killed, he asked Vanessa Bryant if he could do anything for her.
‘And I said: “If you can’t bring my husband and baby back, please make sure that no one takes photographs of them. Please secure the area,”‘ Vanessa Bryant said during the deposition. ‘And he said: “I will.”
And I said: “No, I need you to get on the phone right now and I need you to make sure you secure the area.”‘ Villanueva, she said, excused himself momentarily and reassured her the area had been secured when he came back.
A message seeking comments from Villanueva has not been returned. Villanueva previously said eight deputies allegedly took or shared graphic photos of the helicopter crash scene, but he ordered them deleted.
Los Angeles County is seeking to compel psychiatric evaluations for Vanessa Bryant and others to determine if they truly suffered emotional distress.
Bryant’s lawyers argue in court filings that the examinations are ‘cruel’ while the county contends the examinations are ‘a routine part of the discovery process.’
