Fashion
Kylie Jenner on Why She Wants to ‘Make High Fashion More Attainable’
Ask Kylie Jenner what it feels like to have been famous her whole life, and it’s like asking a fish what water feels like. “It’s really hard for me to answer that question,” she says, “because I just don’t know what it would’ve been like otherwise.” Unlike her older siblings, who can dimly recall their salad days of making Vons runs undisturbed by TMZ, there was no “before” for Jenner, no regular existence to miss. Fame, she says, “is just something I’ve learned to grow up with, or grow up in.”
If fame is the substance in which Jenner swims, she’s been going with the flow lately. If you’re going to be in a fishbowl, you might as well have the most eye-catching finery. For the last few Paris couture weeks, she’s been front and center in looks from Schiaparelli and Jean Paul Gaultier, styled by Alexandra and Mackenzie Grandquist. “I just woke up one day and was like, ‘I want to go to Paris Couture Week,’” Jenner says of the takeover. Her first season, “I had the most fun and didn’t sleep the whole time. Just got a taste for couture. I can’t ever go back now.”
T-shirt, bikini bottom, bracelet, sneakers, Celine by Hedi Slimane.
This past November, she entered the fashion world herself, with a line, Khy, that is built to launch seasonal pieces at accessible price points. Her goal was “to make high fashion more attainable,” she says. Jenner follows the young-designer landscape closely, scouring Pinterest and Instagram. “I just got Tumblr again. I’m always searching for inspiration.” She’s collaborated with rising talents like Natasha Zinko, and Antonin Tron of Atlein (whom the Grandquists introduced her to); her newest linkup is with Danish designer Sia Arnika.
When we speak, Jenner is getting ready to head to Paris Fashion Week. She’s stressed, but “I’m trying to remember how I felt the first time and just have fun with it. It’s hard to have so many iconic looks because you’re always trying to outdo the last one, but I think just remaining myself, being classic, and wearing what makes me feel great is where my head’s at right now.” Minimalism doesn’t really speak to her. “I think I’m actually going in the opposite direction. I’ve definitely had some moments of quiet luxury, as they would say, but I’m always experimenting. At the root of my authentic style, I think I’m more dark feminine,” she muses. She attributes her aesthetic changeup to the fact that “I haven’t had a baby in a few years. The first part of my twenties was having children, learning what my personal style was and then losing it—not knowing how to dress, gaining 60 pounds for both pregnancies. It took me a year to feel like myself again,” she says. “At 27, I feel more confident and more like myself than ever.”
Necklace, Harry Winston. Pumps, Marc Jacobs.
If your heart quickened a bit at the mention of her return to Tumblr, you probably saw the photos in which she brought back her 2015-era King Kylie look, with a teal wig and IG baddie makeup, promptly breaking what’s left of the internet.
“I had a free day,” she says, and she and her glam team decided to get playful. That era “will always be a part of who I am, but it’ll never be what it was when I was younger. I probably would never wear lash extensions and thick eyebrows. There are just certain trends that I’ve grown out of.”
Bodysuit, Stella McCartney.
When she was younger and first getting interested in makeup, long before she became a lip-kit mogul, the modern landscape of Sephora tweens didn’t exist. “There were one or two beauty influencers on YouTube showing you how to do eye shadow,” she marvels. Now “girls are getting great at their makeup. These 12-year-olds are doing makeup amazing! Even my daughter is so interested in wanting to play with makeup, and she’s six.”
Jenner’s own approach to beauty has evolved over the years. She has talked about regretting getting breast augmentation as a teen. “I have to give my younger self grace. I don’t like to have too many regrets in life. I think my path is what got me here today,” she says. “I’m happy with where I am and just have to keep moving forward.”
Top, brief, Le Petit Trou. Tiara, Harry Winston. Sneakers, Nike.
Giving herself grace has been an ongoing process. She struggled with body image during her pregnancies. “I got pregnant when I was 19. Having a baby really young was more shocking, maybe, because I saw these changes happening to my body—all these new stretch marks and things that I didn’t have before.” She also experienced postpartum depression: “I felt like I was on autopilot.” Her mom friends and her sisters helped her through those dark times, and Kim, Kourtney, and Khloé have modeled working motherhood for her (plus, Khloé babysits when Jenner is out of town).
T-shirt, bikini bottom, bracelet, sneakers, Celine by Hedi Slimane.
Whether it’s motherhood or just arriving at the ripe old age of 27, Jenner has been enjoying being more offline these days. “My friends and I laugh because it’s hard to keep up with the internet now. It’s exhausting. When I was posting 24/7—waking up, what I’m eating for breakfast, what I’m wearing for the day, the color of my nails, what car I’m driving, where I’m driving to—I didn’t have an intense schedule. I wasn’t working as much; I didn’t have kids and just had more time. If you’re not posting three times a day on TikTok, you fall behind.” Sometimes she’ll delete her socials from her phone for a week in the interest of being present.
Dress, Loewe. Pumps, Marc Jacobs.
She also wants to protect her kids from the worst of social media. “When I do share my children, I want it to come from me or their father.” And when it comes to getting their own accounts, “it’s no socials for as long as possible. Stormi will come home and she’ll know full TikTok dances. I’m like, ‘Where did you learn this?’” She hopes that they won’t get their own accounts “until they move out of the house,” she jokes.
Jenner has also undergone that twenties rite of passage: the friendship breakup (and makeup). She recently posted a TikTok of herself and Anastasia “Stassie” Karanikolau hanging out with Jordyn Woods, with whom she had a well-documented falling-out in 2019. “I was heartbroken” when it happened, she says. “We’ve always tried to talk through things, so it’s never been a full cold-turkey cutoff; it was needed distance. Anytime something happened, good or bad, and I needed to call someone, it would always be her. To lose that person felt really lonely, but I had to go through that. I learned so much, gained so much independence, and was there for myself. It helped me grow up a little bit, because we were so attached at the hip. I think that in order for us both to grow, she needed to spread her wings and do what she needed to do as well.”
Top, David Koma. Shorts, Khy x Sia Arnika. Earrings, Celine By Hedi Slimane. Rings, Rainbow K.
Jenner’s highly public outings haven’t been limited to front rows. She and rumored boyfriend Timothée Chalamet have taken in both a Beyoncé concert and the US Open. But whatever is going on has not made it to the grid. (Nor, it seems, will it make it to this interview.)
But speaking more generally about keeping her private life private, she says, “I think it’s important to keep things to yourself. It’s hard for me to make a decision by myself sometimes, so the opinion of the whole world…it can be tough.”
Top, Marc Jacobs. Panty, Ephemera Resort. Earring, Eéra.
Today, Jenner’s already mentally in her happy place: Paris Fashion Week. She and her glam team join hands beforehand, like a band before a big arena show. “We’re like, ‘This is fun. We’re having fun. We’re so blessed to be here and to do what we love,’ because we’re all so passionate about what we do, and we’re like, ‘Let’s just enjoy this.’ We always have those check-ins,” she says, “so that we never get too jaded.”
Hair by Jesus Guerrero and Manicure by Zola Ganzorigt, both at The Wall Group; makeup by Ariel Tejada at PRTNRS; set design by Peter Klein at 11th House Agency; produced by Crawford Productions.
This story appears in the November 2024 issue of ELLE.
Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s Fashion Features Director and the author of the book Dress Code, which was selected as one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year. Her writing has previously appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.
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