Rewrite
Kylie Jenner – The Summer Issue 202511 Images
The week I landed in Los Angeles, Crumbl, the viral cookie phenomenon that has built an insatiable (and at times comical) demand via its towering, frosting-laden desserts, dropped its Kardashian-Jenner family menu. Its announcement came like catnip to the driver seat content creator set, chomping their way through a box of aesthetically pleasing cookies that would necessitate a 42km marathon, at the very least, to burn off. Despite this, taste tests and reviews were aplenty. There was even a millennial-pink ad in the Sunday edition of the New York Times with members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan flaunting their wares like sweet-toothed sovereigns.
At its helm, Kris Jenner, who beckoned with her classic yellow layer cake, its promise as omnipresent as the world’s most famous momager. Descending in order of the dynasty, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian and Kendall Jenner followed suit with their calorie-dense creations. But it was the youngest, Kylie Jenner, whose pink confetti sugar cookie first caught my eye, I told her after a brief but friendly introduction. “Oooh, I love that!” She starts in that famous uptalk forged in the guard-gated Hidden Hills community. Despite this there is a warmth, a relatability, a sense of normalcy that is both unexpected and disarming. “I think the reality is having the same friends that I’ve always had, my family’s obviously the same, and keeping my internal circle, (and) private life, the same has been the best thing for me. I don’t feel like it’s changed me. I’ve been able to remain the same. And I get that compliment, too. Sometimes when I meet new people, they’re always pleasantly surprised with how normal I am.”
When I got my hands on her dessert, the first bite was a familiar one. Comforting. Close to a vanilla sponge but edged with a playful confetti of rainbow sprinkles. I imagine that the cookie is a nod to her inherent familiarity and playfulness, but equally a stroke of carefully considered marketing from the 27-year-old businesswoman with a savvy beyond her years. I certainly struggle to believe that it’s mountain of pink frosting in the exact shade she meticulously built her empire upon is mere coincidence. It felt like a sugary snapshot of the (near) billion-dollar baby and her lip kit legacy. “Exactly!” she affirms, as I explain with some trepidation that perhaps I’m projecting on to this pretty pink cookie, before she gives legs to my theory. “Noooo, it’s very intentional. Especially if I’m collaborating with my family. [Crumbl] sent a bunch of ideas for cookies and I was like, ‘It has to be pink, and I need sprinkles.’ I just feel like that represents who I am.”
Today, she’s dialling in from New York City, where she and a gaggle of other limelight loungers are gathered one day out from the Met Gala. Between the Met melee, catching up with her sisters, Kendall and Kim, and today’s fittings, things have certainly taken their toll. That’s besides the chartered flights between coasts, across seas and time zones the week prior, including a pit stop at Miami Grand Prix. “I’m having some pains, honestly. So I’m just, like, lying down recovering.”
Kylie, nestled amid one of the most famous sets of siblings this generation, occupies a unique position. While the eldest five can recall a time without the paparazzi’s rapturous shutter, she simply cannot. She arrived on the 10th of August, 1997, captured on film by her Olympic-gold medal-winning decathlete parent, Caitlyn Jenner. By the age of nine, when the world started keeping up with the Kardashians, and camera crews hovered about the house like flies to a fruit basket, she was nonplussed. It was a mere fact of life. Total privacy was one of the few luxuries she was never afforded. “I don’t really remember a time when that wasn’t the case for me,” she says of her pre-teen fame. “It would have probably been hard for me if I didn’t have a family who understood completely what I was going through.”
I remind Kylie of some of those earlier episodes, and its significance in really capturing that innocent girl as she blossomed into the woman we know today. By the age of 11, she was experimenting with make-up on screen. A touch of eyeliner and a lick of lipstick were her first experiments in sixth grade, earning her a paternal reprimand in those sensitive pre-adolescent years. Her father’s concern and anxiety were noticeable, fuelled by the glamorous examples of her elder sisters, but Kylie was enamoured. She took notes, but never took no for an answer. There was a nascent defiance, an unmistakable hunger not just for the spotlight but a visible joy in its incandescent glow – these, she readily concedes, are the hallmarks of her Leonine nature. “I think I’m a true Leo to the core. I’m very loyal, I loved being the centre of attention growing up. I wasn’t afraid of anything,” she tells me with certainty. “I’m a social butterfly. I love to make people happy and laugh.” She says she’s a Scorpio moon and a Capricorn rising, “so I think the Capricorn is my work ethic and drive. And the Scorpio, it’s just the more fiery side of me.” But is there a sharpness, a sting in among the smiles and laughter? “In the best way.”
For Kylie, the stage had been set and though her make-up obsessions continued, it wasn’t until an innocent teenage kiss with a boy, who was forthcoming in his presumption that her naturally narrow lips would impede her kissing abilities, that she decided to take action. She might have coyly refuted his claims in the moment, but it nonetheless birthed an insecurity, one that would blossom into the signature overlining of her lips and, arguably, the decade-long reign of an empire built upon that callow critique. There was also the fact that finding a matching lip-liner and lipstick proved to be tiresome work until she ultimately birthed her own solution: Kylie’s Lip Kit. To this day, a few formulaic tweaks aside, the blueprint remains: a liquid lipstick and its perfectly partnered liner, both with a matte finish, rapid drying time, and a resolutely kiss-proof promise – a delicious irony given its inception.
As she reached an age marked by those tentative sips of newfound freedoms, Kylie was already minting millions – a staggering $420m within the first 18 months of Kylie Cosmetics, fuelled by the lip kits alone. Teenage girls around the world were swatching shades on their forearms, but Kylie herself remained, rather remarkably, in the dark. For the entirety of her first year in business, she says, she was blissfully unaware of the scale of this burgeoning empire that she had wrought. “I didn’t have my Shopify account password, and I didn’t know how much money I was making. I knew it was very successful, I just didn’t…It really was not, and this is how I honestly feel, it was not about the money for me. It was really just a lane for me to be creative and make other people happy,” she confesses, without a hint of triteness. “About a year later, I [got] the password to our account, and I was like, ‘What is happening?!’” I imagine that somewhere in the world, that boy might occasionally wince at the thought. I also imagine he occupies little real estate in Kylie’s mind, especially as this year she celebrates a decade since its launch.
Since then, Kylie Cosmetics has expanded, launching Cosmic, its first fragrance, in a curvaceous bottle designed to fit snugly in the palm of your hand. Its successor, Cosmic 2.0, arrived in February this year. Then there’s Sprinter, her zero-added-sugar, fruit-infused canned vodka soda promising low calories and a high-quality kick. Last but not least, there’s Khy, an accessible fashion line embracing the drop model for its capsule collections and collaborations with emerging designers. Khy’s collaboration with Poster Girl, the brainchild of CSM graduates Francesca Capper and Natasha Somerville, gave us latex dresses and separates so figure-sculpting they appear vacuum-sealed onto the wearer. And in May, a new link-up with Turkish-British designer Dilara Findikoglu was revealed, promising corsetry, mesh and satins in rich ruby, soft blush and understated sand hues. “I just want to work with brands that have inspired me, that I have supported for a long time,” she says. Attempts to elicit further details about forthcoming collaborations prove futile; she deflects with the smooth and practised media manoeuvring of a pro.
One thing is clear though, Kylie has long seen herself as a canvas for experimentation. She’s spent years playing with make-up, hairstyles and differing fashion looks. But as things naturally evolved for, a sense of loss seemed to ripple through her fanbase, who perceived a newfound refinement. The luxury seemingly more silent, the look leaned towards the natural, the minimal. The world, in a way, had grown up alongside ‘King Kylie’, the girl indelibly marked by her teenage Tumblr obsessions, the contour, the boldly defined brows and that unforgettable teal dye job. She was the ultimate aesthetic at one point in time, even if she was still experimenting and finding her own. So it begs the question, though the internet now believes we are mourning a baddie, but is that true? “That’s so funny, I’ve seen that before too, and I’m always like, first of all, the baddie never left,” she begins, a hint of wry humour in her tone. “I wear a latex dress at least once a week. Like, where do you guys think the baddie went? People saw me in a flowy dress once in my life, and they were like, ‘She’s gone!’ I wore a sundress once in Palm Springs, you know – like, can a girl wear a sundress once?”
She finds it interesting, this persistent clinging to baby Kylie. While her current look draws comments, she’s keenly aware that a return to the blue wigs, heavily sculpted brows and a liberal application of make-up would undoubtedly elicit equally as much, if not more, critique. But if those were the King Kylie years, what, then, defines the present moment? “Oh, my goodness. What do you think?” she asks me, with a playful glint in her tone, before I tell her that her “original baddie” caption from a few weeks ago seems succinct. “Oh, my goodness. This is the original baddie era. Yes, you’re right!”
One question lingers: how does she delineate her personal from her professional life when they seem so inextricably linked? “I am actually in the middle of figuring that out right now. My schedule has gotten really busy, and when I’m not working, I’m with the kids,” she confesses. “Trying to carve out a moment for me is something that I honestly still struggle with.”
However, there is a special somebody who Kylie finds ample time to carve out for. Not long after we speak, she will make it courtside official with him, followed by their first red-carpet appearance as a couple at the 70th David Di Donatello at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. Still, the precise moment Kylie and Timothée Chalamet’s paths first crossed remains elusive, lost in the mayhem of fashion-week. There is the spy-cam-like backstage clip of the pair in January 2023, a tableau with Haider Ackermann beaming between them. Soon after, the sighting of Kylie’s Range Rover outside Chalamet’s place did little to quiet the murmurs, fuelled by several dubious ‘sources’. The story unfolded in whispers: an initial getting to know each other, followed by a sudden cooling off. One ‘insider’ suggested Kylie framed it as a natural drift, the inevitable consequence of a helter-skelter schedule with little to no respite. Then came the Beyoncé concert in September 2023, their first public outing together captured on candid camera. Even with one of the world’s greatest entertainers on stage performing, those pesky lenses couldn’t resist a peek at the two love birds sharing a kiss. The rest of the timeline is out there waiting to be scrolled through on some blog or another.
What’s clear is that Timmy thought the Beyoncé concert was “great”, as mentioned in a 2023 chat with MTV. In a rosy-cheeked nod to his girlfriend, he confessed it was a tad challenging to be “present”. But perhaps the most telling moment arrived courtesy of Kylie herself, in an interview with the New York Times last year. When asked whether her evolving style had any connection to a certain new someone, her response was guarded: “I don’t know how I feel about that,” she offered. “I just don’t want to talk about personal things.” A sentiment, one might observe, that speaks volumes in its very reticence.
There’s no digging that I can do. Today, it’s still a hard off-topic subject. A boundary I can’t cross. I want to ask her all the questions you’re probably dying to know. She wants to keep you all at bay – a healthy separation between the public and her private life. This isn’t her first push for privacy, either. In 2017, Kylie famously kept her pregnancy secret from the world, including the producers of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, before announcing Stormi’s birth on Instagram in 2018. (She had a second child, Aire, in 2022.) She’s expressed tension between gratitude and exhaustion when it comes to success, and more particularly, fame. When so much is given away, what little is left for herself? When I ask how her relationship with fame has evolved over the past decade, she takes the longest pause of our entire conversation. She’s more than happy to touch upon this, even if she must deeply consider her next few sentences. How does she balance her Leo-inclination to bask in the spotlight with this push for privacy and solitude? “Hmm…” she ponders. “I think I’ve found a good balance with sharing the things that I want to share. Keeping parts of my personal life private. I’m just learning as I go, I think.”
From the outside looking in, Kylie’s life is filtered through commerce, the comment section and the court of public opinion. Even though there are times when column inches are dedicated to the more unfavourable tales, she does sometimes take a peek. I tell her that I imagine there is something quite moth-to-a-flame about it. “It’s not something that I completely avoid. I won’t go and look for it, but I’m not afraid of it. I’ve found peace with it and I know my limit,” she says. Has she ever read a comment or critique on herself that made her change this, or rethink that about herself? “No,” she says confidently. The call goes static for a moment. “Ninety per cent of the time, whether it’s negative or positive, people just don’t know the half of anything. So it’s hard to take advice from people who don’t know you.” I ask her if she thinks the media can be harsh on her and she ponders briefly. “I do, but I honestly think I’m so used to it, and I just don’t really care what people say. Also, you know, other people’s opinions of me have never affected my personal life, how my friends view me, how my kids view me, how my family views me, or the success of my business.”
Kylie’s kingdom wasn’t built in a day, and while you may not keep up with the Kardashians, there’s certainly a lesson or two to be learned from them. Today, she is the most followed of the Kardashian-Jenner family, with an Instagram audience of 393 million people. That’s 36 million more than Kim Kardashian, and 52 million more than the entire population of the US. She tells me this is only really just dawning on her. “I’m coming up on the 10th anniversary of Kylie Cosmetics, and I’ve been thinking about the beginning a lot. With the success of my brand and the influence, I just don’t think I knew…” she trails off. “I don’t think I knew what I had when I had it. Looking back, I was so young and I had the world in my hands, and I still feel that way. I’m trying to live in the moment and appreciate all of the amazing blessings in my life instead of waiting 20 years and looking back. Even with the Met coming up tomorrow, I’m trying not to stress about it and instead enjoy these experiences I’m lucky enough to have.”
Sometimes its the little things, like when Stormi ropes her into doing TikToks. She doesn’t have a phone or any social media, but she’s at school, and her friends have no qualms passing on the latest dance trends. “She’ll come home and be like, ‘Mom, I learned this TikTok dance at school.’ And I’m like, ‘How do you know this dance?’” Still, they do them, and they “have the best time”, but Kylie never posts them. “She doesn’t know [that] a million people would see if it was posted.” She’s protective of her babies. I remind her that in some ways, that echoes her father, who was, once upon a time, equally as conscious of the big, wide world that would one day grab hold of their child. With Stormi only two years shy of the age the world was introduced to her, I ask her how she feels about that and whether she thinks about her parents decisions for her then. She admits she sometimes finds herself echoing her parents: “I do have those moments. I think I have [a better] understanding of my parents now. I understand why they made the decisions they did… You don’t see it when you’re a kid, but… your parents are always right!”What does she see in Stormi’s future? “She’s a good dancer. She has this voice. I don’t know, I have no idea, but I hope that she’s an artist, and I could go on tour and be her tour manager,” she says.
As for Kylie, it feels as if she’s getting a hold of her life in ways she might never have before. Reclaiming what she has missed, not living with regrets and carving out a space of her own away from the spotlight. At once reflective and prospective, there’s a calmness to the baby of the family as she edges nearer to her 30s. When I ask what it is she’s celebrating right now, she answers, “Life,” with sincerity. “I’m trying to have a little fun and not take things too seriously, you know?” So, I ask, what can we expect from this new era of Kylie? Without a second thought, holding her cards close to her chest and in her signature ‘wouldn’t you like to know’ tone, she reveals, “I think… it has to be a surprise.”
Hair CHERILYN FARRIS at HIGHLIGHT ARTISTS, make-up ARIEL TEJADA at PRTNRS, nails ZOLA GANZORIGT at THE WALL GROUP, set design BRIAN LEE at NEW SCHOOL REPRESENTS, lighting JACK BUSTER, photographic assistants JOE BECKLEY, DEVIN WILLIAMS, styling assistants MONICA JIANG, RUBY BRAVO, VIVIAN BUENROSTRO, LAURA JAIMES, MACY RICHARDS, JUDE WAITE, EDIE FREDERICKS, set design assistant SCOTT TOM, digital operator BRENDAN PATTENGALE, production CONNECT THE DOTS, production assistants TCHAD COUSINS, KHARI COUSINS, SOHEYL HAMZAVI, DANIELLE ROULEAU, film processing and scanning PHOTO IMPACT, post-production HAND OF GOD, special thanks NEW SCHOOL REPRESENTS
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Kylie Jenner – The Summer Issue 202511 Images
The week I landed in Los Angeles, Crumbl, the viral cookie phenomenon that has built an insatiable (and at times comical) demand via its towering, frosting-laden desserts, dropped its Kardashian-Jenner family menu. Its announcement came like catnip to the driver seat content creator set, chomping their way through a box of aesthetically pleasing cookies that would necessitate a 42km marathon, at the very least, to burn off. Despite this, taste tests and reviews were aplenty. There was even a millennial-pink ad in the Sunday edition of the New York Times with members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan flaunting their wares like sweet-toothed sovereigns.
At its helm, Kris Jenner, who beckoned with her classic yellow layer cake, its promise as omnipresent as the world’s most famous momager. Descending in order of the dynasty, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian and Kendall Jenner followed suit with their calorie-dense creations. But it was the youngest, Kylie Jenner, whose pink confetti sugar cookie first caught my eye, I told her after a brief but friendly introduction. “Oooh, I love that!” She starts in that famous uptalk forged in the guard-gated Hidden Hills community. Despite this there is a warmth, a relatability, a sense of normalcy that is both unexpected and disarming. “I think the reality is having the same friends that I’ve always had, my family’s obviously the same, and keeping my internal circle, (and) private life, the same has been the best thing for me. I don’t feel like it’s changed me. I’ve been able to remain the same. And I get that compliment, too. Sometimes when I meet new people, they’re always pleasantly surprised with how normal I am.”
When I got my hands on her dessert, the first bite was a familiar one. Comforting. Close to a vanilla sponge but edged with a playful confetti of rainbow sprinkles. I imagine that the cookie is a nod to her inherent familiarity and playfulness, but equally a stroke of carefully considered marketing from the 27-year-old businesswoman with a savvy beyond her years. I certainly struggle to believe that it’s mountain of pink frosting in the exact shade she meticulously built her empire upon is mere coincidence. It felt like a sugary snapshot of the (near) billion-dollar baby and her lip kit legacy. “Exactly!” she affirms, as I explain with some trepidation that perhaps I’m projecting on to this pretty pink cookie, before she gives legs to my theory. “Noooo, it’s very intentional. Especially if I’m collaborating with my family. [Crumbl] sent a bunch of ideas for cookies and I was like, ‘It has to be pink, and I need sprinkles.’ I just feel like that represents who I am.”
Today, she’s dialling in from New York City, where she and a gaggle of other limelight loungers are gathered one day out from the Met Gala. Between the Met melee, catching up with her sisters, Kendall and Kim, and today’s fittings, things have certainly taken their toll. That’s besides the chartered flights between coasts, across seas and time zones the week prior, including a pit stop at Miami Grand Prix. “I’m having some pains, honestly. So I’m just, like, lying down recovering.”
Kylie, nestled amid one of the most famous sets of siblings this generation, occupies a unique position. While the eldest five can recall a time without the paparazzi’s rapturous shutter, she simply cannot. She arrived on the 10th of August, 1997, captured on film by her Olympic-gold medal-winning decathlete parent, Caitlyn Jenner. By the age of nine, when the world started keeping up with the Kardashians, and camera crews hovered about the house like flies to a fruit basket, she was nonplussed. It was a mere fact of life. Total privacy was one of the few luxuries she was never afforded. “I don’t really remember a time when that wasn’t the case for me,” she says of her pre-teen fame. “It would have probably been hard for me if I didn’t have a family who understood completely what I was going through.”
I remind Kylie of some of those earlier episodes, and its significance in really capturing that innocent girl as she blossomed into the woman we know today. By the age of 11, she was experimenting with make-up on screen. A touch of eyeliner and a lick of lipstick were her first experiments in sixth grade, earning her a paternal reprimand in those sensitive pre-adolescent years. Her father’s concern and anxiety were noticeable, fuelled by the glamorous examples of her elder sisters, but Kylie was enamoured. She took notes, but never took no for an answer. There was a nascent defiance, an unmistakable hunger not just for the spotlight but a visible joy in its incandescent glow – these, she readily concedes, are the hallmarks of her Leonine nature. “I think I’m a true Leo to the core. I’m very loyal, I loved being the centre of attention growing up. I wasn’t afraid of anything,” she tells me with certainty. “I’m a social butterfly. I love to make people happy and laugh.” She says she’s a Scorpio moon and a Capricorn rising, “so I think the Capricorn is my work ethic and drive. And the Scorpio, it’s just the more fiery side of me.” But is there a sharpness, a sting in among the smiles and laughter? “In the best way.”
For Kylie, the stage had been set and though her make-up obsessions continued, it wasn’t until an innocent teenage kiss with a boy, who was forthcoming in his presumption that her naturally narrow lips would impede her kissing abilities, that she decided to take action. She might have coyly refuted his claims in the moment, but it nonetheless birthed an insecurity, one that would blossom into the signature overlining of her lips and, arguably, the decade-long reign of an empire built upon that callow critique. There was also the fact that finding a matching lip-liner and lipstick proved to be tiresome work until she ultimately birthed her own solution: Kylie’s Lip Kit. To this day, a few formulaic tweaks aside, the blueprint remains: a liquid lipstick and its perfectly partnered liner, both with a matte finish, rapid drying time, and a resolutely kiss-proof promise – a delicious irony given its inception.
As she reached an age marked by those tentative sips of newfound freedoms, Kylie was already minting millions – a staggering $420m within the first 18 months of Kylie Cosmetics, fuelled by the lip kits alone. Teenage girls around the world were swatching shades on their forearms, but Kylie herself remained, rather remarkably, in the dark. For the entirety of her first year in business, she says, she was blissfully unaware of the scale of this burgeoning empire that she had wrought. “I didn’t have my Shopify account password, and I didn’t know how much money I was making. I knew it was very successful, I just didn’t…It really was not, and this is how I honestly feel, it was not about the money for me. It was really just a lane for me to be creative and make other people happy,” she confesses, without a hint of triteness. “About a year later, I [got] the password to our account, and I was like, ‘What is happening?!’” I imagine that somewhere in the world, that boy might occasionally wince at the thought. I also imagine he occupies little real estate in Kylie’s mind, especially as this year she celebrates a decade since its launch.
Since then, Kylie Cosmetics has expanded, launching Cosmic, its first fragrance, in a curvaceous bottle designed to fit snugly in the palm of your hand. Its successor, Cosmic 2.0, arrived in February this year. Then there’s Sprinter, her zero-added-sugar, fruit-infused canned vodka soda promising low calories and a high-quality kick. Last but not least, there’s Khy, an accessible fashion line embracing the drop model for its capsule collections and collaborations with emerging designers. Khy’s collaboration with Poster Girl, the brainchild of CSM graduates Francesca Capper and Natasha Somerville, gave us latex dresses and separates so figure-sculpting they appear vacuum-sealed onto the wearer. And in May, a new link-up with Turkish-British designer Dilara Findikoglu was revealed, promising corsetry, mesh and satins in rich ruby, soft blush and understated sand hues. “I just want to work with brands that have inspired me, that I have supported for a long time,” she says. Attempts to elicit further details about forthcoming collaborations prove futile; she deflects with the smooth and practised media manoeuvring of a pro.
One thing is clear though, Kylie has long seen herself as a canvas for experimentation. She’s spent years playing with make-up, hairstyles and differing fashion looks. But as things naturally evolved for, a sense of loss seemed to ripple through her fanbase, who perceived a newfound refinement. The luxury seemingly more silent, the look leaned towards the natural, the minimal. The world, in a way, had grown up alongside ‘King Kylie’, the girl indelibly marked by her teenage Tumblr obsessions, the contour, the boldly defined brows and that unforgettable teal dye job. She was the ultimate aesthetic at one point in time, even if she was still experimenting and finding her own. So it begs the question, though the internet now believes we are mourning a baddie, but is that true? “That’s so funny, I’ve seen that before too, and I’m always like, first of all, the baddie never left,” she begins, a hint of wry humour in her tone. “I wear a latex dress at least once a week. Like, where do you guys think the baddie went? People saw me in a flowy dress once in my life, and they were like, ‘She’s gone!’ I wore a sundress once in Palm Springs, you know – like, can a girl wear a sundress once?”
She finds it interesting, this persistent clinging to baby Kylie. While her current look draws comments, she’s keenly aware that a return to the blue wigs, heavily sculpted brows and a liberal application of make-up would undoubtedly elicit equally as much, if not more, critique. But if those were the King Kylie years, what, then, defines the present moment? “Oh, my goodness. What do you think?” she asks me, with a playful glint in her tone, before I tell her that her “original baddie” caption from a few weeks ago seems succinct. “Oh, my goodness. This is the original baddie era. Yes, you’re right!”
One question lingers: how does she delineate her personal from her professional life when they seem so inextricably linked? “I am actually in the middle of figuring that out right now. My schedule has gotten really busy, and when I’m not working, I’m with the kids,” she confesses. “Trying to carve out a moment for me is something that I honestly still struggle with.”
However, there is a special somebody who Kylie finds ample time to carve out for. Not long after we speak, she will make it courtside official with him, followed by their first red-carpet appearance as a couple at the 70th David Di Donatello at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. Still, the precise moment Kylie and Timothée Chalamet’s paths first crossed remains elusive, lost in the mayhem of fashion-week. There is the spy-cam-like backstage clip of the pair in January 2023, a tableau with Haider Ackermann beaming between them. Soon after, the sighting of Kylie’s Range Rover outside Chalamet’s place did little to quiet the murmurs, fuelled by several dubious ‘sources’. The story unfolded in whispers: an initial getting to know each other, followed by a sudden cooling off. One ‘insider’ suggested Kylie framed it as a natural drift, the inevitable consequence of a helter-skelter schedule with little to no respite. Then came the Beyoncé concert in September 2023, their first public outing together captured on candid camera. Even with one of the world’s greatest entertainers on stage performing, those pesky lenses couldn’t resist a peek at the two love birds sharing a kiss. The rest of the timeline is out there waiting to be scrolled through on some blog or another.
What’s clear is that Timmy thought the Beyoncé concert was “great”, as mentioned in a 2023 chat with MTV. In a rosy-cheeked nod to his girlfriend, he confessed it was a tad challenging to be “present”. But perhaps the most telling moment arrived courtesy of Kylie herself, in an interview with the New York Times last year. When asked whether her evolving style had any connection to a certain new someone, her response was guarded: “I don’t know how I feel about that,” she offered. “I just don’t want to talk about personal things.” A sentiment, one might observe, that speaks volumes in its very reticence.
There’s no digging that I can do. Today, it’s still a hard off-topic subject. A boundary I can’t cross. I want to ask her all the questions you’re probably dying to know. She wants to keep you all at bay – a healthy separation between the public and her private life. This isn’t her first push for privacy, either. In 2017, Kylie famously kept her pregnancy secret from the world, including the producers of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, before announcing Stormi’s birth on Instagram in 2018. (She had a second child, Aire, in 2022.) She’s expressed tension between gratitude and exhaustion when it comes to success, and more particularly, fame. When so much is given away, what little is left for herself? When I ask how her relationship with fame has evolved over the past decade, she takes the longest pause of our entire conversation. She’s more than happy to touch upon this, even if she must deeply consider her next few sentences. How does she balance her Leo-inclination to bask in the spotlight with this push for privacy and solitude? “Hmm…” she ponders. “I think I’ve found a good balance with sharing the things that I want to share. Keeping parts of my personal life private. I’m just learning as I go, I think.”
From the outside looking in, Kylie’s life is filtered through commerce, the comment section and the court of public opinion. Even though there are times when column inches are dedicated to the more unfavourable tales, she does sometimes take a peek. I tell her that I imagine there is something quite moth-to-a-flame about it. “It’s not something that I completely avoid. I won’t go and look for it, but I’m not afraid of it. I’ve found peace with it and I know my limit,” she says. Has she ever read a comment or critique on herself that made her change this, or rethink that about herself? “No,” she says confidently. The call goes static for a moment. “Ninety per cent of the time, whether it’s negative or positive, people just don’t know the half of anything. So it’s hard to take advice from people who don’t know you.” I ask her if she thinks the media can be harsh on her and she ponders briefly. “I do, but I honestly think I’m so used to it, and I just don’t really care what people say. Also, you know, other people’s opinions of me have never affected my personal life, how my friends view me, how my kids view me, how my family views me, or the success of my business.”
Kylie’s kingdom wasn’t built in a day, and while you may not keep up with the Kardashians, there’s certainly a lesson or two to be learned from them. Today, she is the most followed of the Kardashian-Jenner family, with an Instagram audience of 393 million people. That’s 36 million more than Kim Kardashian, and 52 million more than the entire population of the US. She tells me this is only really just dawning on her. “I’m coming up on the 10th anniversary of Kylie Cosmetics, and I’ve been thinking about the beginning a lot. With the success of my brand and the influence, I just don’t think I knew…” she trails off. “I don’t think I knew what I had when I had it. Looking back, I was so young and I had the world in my hands, and I still feel that way. I’m trying to live in the moment and appreciate all of the amazing blessings in my life instead of waiting 20 years and looking back. Even with the Met coming up tomorrow, I’m trying not to stress about it and instead enjoy these experiences I’m lucky enough to have.”
Sometimes its the little things, like when Stormi ropes her into doing TikToks. She doesn’t have a phone or any social media, but she’s at school, and her friends have no qualms passing on the latest dance trends. “She’ll come home and be like, ‘Mom, I learned this TikTok dance at school.’ And I’m like, ‘How do you know this dance?’” Still, they do them, and they “have the best time”, but Kylie never posts them. “She doesn’t know [that] a million people would see if it was posted.” She’s protective of her babies. I remind her that in some ways, that echoes her father, who was, once upon a time, equally as conscious of the big, wide world that would one day grab hold of their child. With Stormi only two years shy of the age the world was introduced to her, I ask her how she feels about that and whether she thinks about her parents decisions for her then. She admits she sometimes finds herself echoing her parents: “I do have those moments. I think I have [a better] understanding of my parents now. I understand why they made the decisions they did… You don’t see it when you’re a kid, but… your parents are always right!”What does she see in Stormi’s future? “She’s a good dancer. She has this voice. I don’t know, I have no idea, but I hope that she’s an artist, and I could go on tour and be her tour manager,” she says.
As for Kylie, it feels as if she’s getting a hold of her life in ways she might never have before. Reclaiming what she has missed, not living with regrets and carving out a space of her own away from the spotlight. At once reflective and prospective, there’s a calmness to the baby of the family as she edges nearer to her 30s. When I ask what it is she’s celebrating right now, she answers, “Life,” with sincerity. “I’m trying to have a little fun and not take things too seriously, you know?” So, I ask, what can we expect from this new era of Kylie? Without a second thought, holding her cards close to her chest and in her signature ‘wouldn’t you like to know’ tone, she reveals, “I think… it has to be a surprise.”
Hair CHERILYN FARRIS at HIGHLIGHT ARTISTS, make-up ARIEL TEJADA at PRTNRS, nails ZOLA GANZORIGT at THE WALL GROUP, set design BRIAN LEE at NEW SCHOOL REPRESENTS, lighting JACK BUSTER, photographic assistants JOE BECKLEY, DEVIN WILLIAMS, styling assistants MONICA JIANG, RUBY BRAVO, VIVIAN BUENROSTRO, LAURA JAIMES, MACY RICHARDS, JUDE WAITE, EDIE FREDERICKS, set design assistant SCOTT TOM, digital operator BRENDAN PATTENGALE, production CONNECT THE DOTS, production assistants TCHAD COUSINS, KHARI COUSINS, SOHEYL HAMZAVI, DANIELLE ROULEAU, film processing and scanning PHOTO IMPACT, post-production HAND OF GOD, special thanks NEW SCHOOL REPRESENTS
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