GLOW GETTER
From fighting for children’s rights to collaborating with Sia on new music, Paris Hilton isn’t a dumb blond — she’s just gotten really good at pretending to be one.
WORDS BY ANNIKA LAUTENS
Paris Hilton is not hot — far from it. It’s an early evening in March and we’re in the courtyard of Pad90210, a beautiful midcentury house in Beverly Hills. Reliably warm L.A. turns chilly as the sun fades. Posing in a tiny Prada two-piece on the set of FASHION’s Summer 2024 cover shoot, Hilton bravely tries to hide her shivers.
Dress, $4,995, Michael Kors Collection. Rings (left and middle), $1,700 each, and ring (right), $700, Bluboho.
“Do you want a blanket, Paris?” I ask from the side of the camera. She animatedly nods her head, a desperate “Please” escaping from her lips. Grabbing the only warm material I can find, I wrap Hilton’s shoulders in wool, and she holds on to me for body heat. As we cozy up to each other in a hug that feels way more comfortable than it should be (we’ve only just met), I tell her I hope she has a nice bath waiting for her at home. Does she ever! “Every night, my husband [Carter Reum] and I take a bubble bath together — it’s our ritual,” she shares, blushing. “We talk about our day and what’s going on with our businesses; it’s sweet and fun. These past couple of years with him have been the best of my life.”
You see, Hilton has just come out on the other side of an identity crisis of sorts. Ten (maybe even just five) years ago, it would have been easy, nay expected, to write her off as a spoiled heiress, the teenage star of a sex tape, the dumb blond from The Simple Life and a party girl who said things like “That’s hot.” But thanks to the 2020 documentary This Is Paris and bestselling book Paris: The Memoir, the world has learned just how colossally we have underestimated her.
“I basically invented Y2K fashion. There’s the blueprint, and I’m the pink print!”
Hilton is a performance artist (more on that later), a businesswoman who sits atop an empire of 19 different product lines, a survivor of the abusive “reform” boarding-school system, a fierce children’s-rights advocate who is fighting to pass the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act in the U.S. Congress, a wife and mom of two kids under two and a DJ and singer coming out of an early retirement.
“I’m here to save pop music,” she tells me playfully over the phone the day after the shoot. Her second album is coming out this fall, 18 years after her first and hot on the heels of her collaboration with Sia on the song, “Fame Won’t Love You.” And with the singer as the executive producer, Hilton’s new slate of songs promises to be the perfect cocktail of catchy and contemplative, especially as the first single makes its debut this summer, around Pride. (For reference, her 2023 Pride concert sold out in just three minutes!) “It has everything,” she teases about the album. “It’s very popcentric, obviously, but it also has love songs, dance music and a few ballads.”
Fittingly, the playlist Hilton has chosen for the photo shoot is called “Y2K party,” and, yes, her 2006 bop “Stars Are Blind” does come on, which prompts a few giggles. But nothing can distract her from her mission: to serve looks. Hilton knows how to pose, where to look, what angles to cheat and how to make her body look its best. (To be fair, though, it would be hard to make her look bad.)
What I was not expecting, however, was the shyness that took over once the cameras turned off. She’s quiet, gentle and incredibly kind to everyone on-set, and I get the sense that she’s a natural introvert thrust into extrovert territory for her job. Nevertheless, she’s glowing — more than any fake tan. I don’t doubt that she’s been recently touched by a tanning machine, but, forgive the sentimentality, it really feels like it’s coming from within — from a woman who is finally, to her core, happy. And she is happy; it just took a while for her to get there.
Sweater, $3,900, top, $2,200, and bottoms, $950, Prada. Eyewear, Hilton’s own.
Top, $590, and shorts, $590, Casablanca. Collar, $830, Bootzy Couture. Ring, $25,700, Bulgari. Shoes, Hilton’s own.
Paris: The Memoir paints the portrait of a young woman who is drowning in trauma, desperately grasping onto any available life raft she can find. Her rebellious childhood started in New York City in the early 1980s but reached a tipping point in the ’90s. Suffocated by her strict parents and private schools that couldn’t accommodate her challenges (she was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult), Hilton was desperate for an escape and found refuge on dance floors across the city. Afraid for her safety, the Hiltons decided to send their 16-year-old to a boarding school for “troubled teens.” And this is where things got dark. Like, really dark.
It started with two men kidnapping Hilton in the middle of the night, literally dragging her out of her bedroom by her ankles as her parents watched. For the next year and a half, a teenage Hilton was beaten, degraded and starved at multiple U.S. institutions, the worst of which was Provo Canyon School in Utah. Despite numerous attempts to run away, Hilton was regularly drugged and sedated against her will, subjected to invasive “cervical exams” by male and female “teachers” and eventually stripped and put into solitary confinement for days on end. (It has since come out that her parents were unaware of the mistreatment happening at these facilities.)
It was in those cells where the “Paris Persona” was first born. “The darkness was so all-consuming, the only way I could stay alive was to find a source of light inside myself,” she writes in her memoir. “This wasn’t a nebulous daydream; it was a mechanically specific vision. I plotted logistics…. I focused on my inner empire. I would make so much money and be so successful, no one could ever have control over me again.”
When Hilton finally got out, she wasted no time in putting her plan into action. After months of not even being allowed to look in a mirror, she was determined to make up for lost time, lost shopping, lost partying, lost love and lost attention. (For many years, Hilton equated love and paparazzi attention as one and the same.)
She quickly became an L.A. socialite, and so did her friends — like longtime BFF Nicole Richie, whom she met when she was a child. Enter the producers of The Simple Life, who were looking to revamp reality TV and knew just the two young women to do it. “They basically told us, ‘Nicole, you’re the troublemaker, and Paris, you’re the dumb blond,’ and I went full force with that narrative,” Hilton explains. “When the show became such a huge phenomenon, people thought that was who I actually was, so I played into it.”
Jacket, $1,195, top, price upon request, and shorts, $570, Nina Ricci. Gloves, $300, Handsome Stockholm. Ring, Hilton’s own.
It’s well documented that Hilton has two distinct voices: her deeper, private speaking one and the part-baby, part-Valley girl fluctuation she uses for the character of “Paris Hilton.” During our time on-set and on the phone, I experienced both, sometimes within the same sentence. “I did it for so many years that the Paris voice will just happen and I don’t even realize it,” she reveals. “Sometimes I’ll do it when I’m shy or nervous or being cute or funny. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.” And Hilton isn’t sure she wants to. She shares that in many ways “the voice” represents the fun part of her but that it also saved her.
“If I hadn’t had that character, I would’ve had to feel and process everything, and at that point in my life, I wasn’t ready to,” she says. So she used the Paris Persona as a mask — a way to dissociate from her past pain and navigate the new-found media scrutiny that came from being the diamond of the season. “I could be like, ‘Well, they’re not even talking about me; they’re talking about the character, so that doesn’t hurt as much.’”
I ask Hilton if she would describe herself and other celebrities as performance artists, and I’m met with an enthusiastic “Yes!” “We all play characters, but they’re all different and some are judged more harshly than others.” Not that she blames anyone. In a profound part of our conversation, Hilton acknowledges that her experience at Provo prepared her for Hollywood.
We’re both quiet, letting that sink in, before I break the silence. “That’s heartbreaking,” I say, feeling the full effect of her words. She agrees. “But I really do believe that’s true. I’ve been in this industry for decades now, and I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. You have to be so strong — this town is really difficult.”
How has that affected her relationship with fame? Well, the fact that she hid the birth of her two children, Phoenix (born in January 2023 via surrogate) and London (born in November 2023, also by surrogate), speaks volumes. “The media has controlled so much of my life that Carter and I decided we wanted this to be just for ourselves,” she explains. “I didn’t want anyone talking about my babies before they were here.” And that included her mom, who was captured in the Peacock reality-TV series Paris in Love meeting Phoenix for the first time.
Dress, $2,500, MAR by Maria Karimi. Top, $560, Dion Lee at Ssense.
So then, why the decision to have a show at all? Hilton can be charmingly contradictory, in a way that seems more innately human than calculating. In the past, she has admitted to both seeking out the paparazzi and running away from them, using the media to her advantage yet being relentlessly harassed by them and hiding her life but also broadcasting it on a streaming service. In this particular instance, she chalks it up to wanting her “Little Hiltons” (read “fans”) to see her happily ever after.
“I felt the 2020 documentary ended in a way that wasn’t really my ending,” she says, referencing her love story with her now husband. “I love sharing my life and this new phase with my fans. But I also now have the best family home videos that Carter, Phoenix, London and I will get to watch together someday.”
In case it isn’t obvious, Hilton absolutely adores being a mom. She loves everything from the small everyday-isms, like hearing her kids laugh, to the mundane moments of taking them to swimming lessons. But she’s particularly excited for when they get older as she has a whole storage unit full of her iconic Y2K fashions just waiting for when London comes of age. “I basically invented Y2K fashion,” she jokes. “I am the mood board. There’s the blueprint, and I’m the pink print!”
Besides feeling incredibly vindicated for her past outfit choices — “I’ve been telling you guys for 20 years this is the place to be!” — Hilton doesn’t think she’ll ever truly depart from her original Barbiecore aesthetic. She’s just combining it with a new, more “futuristic” vibe. (Think “Y2K mixed with the year 2080.”)
She describes fashion as a form of storytelling and a great way to express yourself, but her real memories come from her branded perfumes. “Every time I spray one of them, I immediately go back to the time I was working on it,” she says. “Each one represents a different time in my life, and they tell the story of me evolving into the woman I am today.”
Top, $160, and bottoms, $130, Beth Richards. Hat, $430, Clyde.
While she hates to pick a favourite, the first one — titled after its namesake and celebrating its 20th anniversary this year — is the most nostalgic, and she has a particular soft spot for Love Rush, the perfume she created for her 2021 wedding. “I had dreamed of that day ever since I was a little girl, and imagining other people wearing it on their wedding day is really special.”
For her 30th (yes, 30th!) fragrance, Hilton can’t reveal the name but teases that it will be released during the holidays. And as if that weren’t enough, in addition to her bestselling monochromatic pink cookware line, Hilton’s company, 11:11 Media, has partnered with New York-based IHL Group to create a collection of women’s and girls’ apparel and accessories for fall and holiday 2024 and is developing her memoir into a TV series with Elle and Dakota Fanning’s production company, Lewellen Pictures, and indie studio A24. And we haven’t even gotten to her ongoing advocacy work!
“We can’t play politics with children’s lives,” she asserts, referring to her time at Provo Canyon School. “It’s horrible what’s happening there, and these kids haven’t had a voice until now.” So, for the past three years, Hilton has been working on the Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act — legislation that will regulate the “troubled teen” facilities she attended in her youth. While the bill has yet to be approved in the U.S. Congress, she has gained 95 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House as of the time of writing and has passed eight state laws, impacting 13 million children.
However, it’s now time for Hilton to get back to her own children. She’s been on location for almost 10 hours, and in that time, we’ve shot a record-breaking 12 looks. Upon hearing that Hilton would be in swimsuit-like ensembles, Reum drove to the set to watch his wifey work before whisking her away to their bathtub. When she sees him come in, Hilton lights up like Fourth of July fireworks. Whatever was remaining of the Paris Persona instantly melts away and leaves in its wake a sweet soul who has finally found her happy place.
“Life is so short,” Hilton begins the next day on our phone call. “I don’t want to let any more bad or negative people into my life. I’ve already wasted so much energy on them. I want to surround myself with people who love me, who I can trust and who also love to spread love and happiness around the world.” Now that’s hot.
Top, $1,590, and briefs, $1,070, Miu Miu. Ring, Hilton’s own.
Jacket, top, skirt and bag, prices upon request, Chanel.
Top, $815, and pants, $1,030, Area. Eyewear, $825, Balenciaga at Ssense.
Dress, $23,180, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.
Top, $380, and skirt, $550, Brielle. Shoes, $230, Maguire.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG SWALES
CREATIVE DIRECTION BY GEORGE ANTONOPOULOS
STYLING BY LEILA BANI
HAIR Lisa-Marie Powell for Art Department/Living Proof. MAKEUP Melissa Hurkman. NAILS Britney Tokyo. FASHION ASSISTANTS Claire Wickser and Michael Vasquez. PHOTO ASSISTANTS Michael Camacho and Yolanda Leaney. DIGITAL TECHNICIAN Amanda Yanez. PRODUCER Alexey Galetskiy for AGPNYC. PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Ivan Shentalinskiy for AGPNYC.
Shot on location at Pad90210.
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