Exclusive cover story: Kicking up with the Kardashians

By Amy Williams

UPDATED: 19:01 EST, 3 November 2012

As the queens of US reality TV prepare for an invasion of the British high street, YOU’s Amy Williams is granted an exclusive audience with the KARDASHIANS

From left: Khloe, Kim and Kourtney

As the glamorous epicentre of brand Kardashian, the Kardashian sisters – Kourtney, 33, Kim, 32, and Khloé, 28 – are worth tens of millions of dollars. Together they front one of  the world’s most watched reality TV series, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, along with its various spin-off shows. They own several clothing and lifestyle stores stocking, among other things, Kardashian mineral water and Kardashian beach towels; they oversee a make-up and fragrance line, and they design a fashion range called Kardashian Kollection, which is why we are meeting today, ahead of its launch in Dorothy Perkins stores across the UK on Thursday. They each own sprawling Los Angeles pads; have a combined Twitter following of 32 million, and sensational personal lives that have included a 72-day marriage, a 30-day courtship, infertility, on-screen childbirth, superstar boyfriends and a notorious sex tape.

‘Because of our show, people think they know me and can tweet me anything’ Khloé

If the Kardashians have passed you by entirely then congratulations may be in order, along with concern over where it is that you’ve been hiding. Together with their extended family (the dysfunctionality of which has so far spawned seven seasons of Keeping Up With…) they are the current bread and butter of celebrity magazines and news sites, where they are so ubiquitous it seems strange that the spell check on my laptop questions their name. On an average day, the showbiz news section of MailOnline – to which half the female population is currently addicted – will run at least two stories on Kim alone, largely derived from her new relationship with music star Kanye West, her famously curvy figure and/or what she is wearing. A point that is not lost on Kim, who, it turns out, is a MailOnline reader herself. ‘I look at that site, just never the comments, right; you can’t waste your time on that,’ she says wryly. ‘Just two days ago it showed photos of me wearing something they said was unflattering. But it was the cutest, most comfortable dress by Alexander Wang. I mean, guys, come on – I was at an airport about to board a night flight! But it wasn’t tight and they didn’t approve,’ she says, shrugging coyly, acknowledging that between the big stories on her life – say, last year’s megabucks wedding to basketball player Kris Humphries, which lasted two and a half months – her significance comes by way of her curve appeal.     

Kourtney

Khloe

Kim getting her make up touched up in between takes on the shoot

So much so that when I tell people I am meeting Kim and her sisters, the only thing anyone wants to know about is her bottom and how ample it is ‘in real reality’. The fuss around Kim’s derrière has reached, and possibly eclipsed, that of J-Lo’s. Plausibly, it is responsible for bottom-enhancing knickers, for padded jeans and even buttock implants (Kim resorted to X-raying her own during an episode of Keeping Up With… to prove she’d not had them surgically enhanced).

And so it is that when she and her sisters join me at New York’s Trump SoHo Hotel, in a small, beige suite that has views across to the River Hudson, I find myself tempted to ask if they can do a twirl before they sit down. We are here, after all, to talk about fashion, in which booties and bodies and body image play a large part. The Kardashians, it could be argued, promote a body type very much healthier than skinny models or self-starved starlets. They are not overweight; they are normal weight. They have a successful plus-size range, Kurves, and the Kardashian Kollection, which all three are decked out in today, is created under a strict ‘would we wear it ourselves?’ testing process.

Kim and Kourtney

Khloe

Kim is dressed in a long black blazer which keeps her most famous asset hidden from view. Below a miniskirt, her legs are slim and tanned and she’s so diddy that when she props herself up on the sofa between her sisters and stretches her legs out in front of her, her Tom Ford-clad feet dangle off the edge. Kourtney, the eldest, but at  ‘5ft-nothing’ the shortest, sits neatly on the front of the cushions, self-consciously smoothing her skater-style skirt and re-tucking a voluminous polka-dot blouse. Her hair is pinned up in the highest of buns. (‘It’s kind of a new look. This morning I googled my name and “bad hair”. It’s a good way to know what not to do.’) Khloé has opted for a black, figure-hugging pencil skirt that she looks so great in I feel compelled to recommend that anyone with a bottom they worry about dressing should rush ASAP to Dorothy Perkins to purchase one.

‘Our brand is about empowering women’ Kim

The Kardashians have been on the scene since 2007, when their show first aired on the  E! TV channel. Before this they were not unlike any other preened and privileged young things about Hollywood – shopping was on Rodeo Drive, day trips were to Michael Jackson’s Neverland and nights out were with Paris Hilton. They’d already had a taste of fame courtesy of their late, limelight-loving father Robert, who was on O J Simpson’s defence team. (‘We thought my dad was the smartest man in the whole world. And if he thought O J was innocent, we were going to be on that side,’ Kim has said. Not an easy call – their mother, by then divorced from Robert, had been friends with O J’s murdered wife Nicole Brown.) The TV series sprang from an indiscretion on Kim’s part – a sex tape leaked by a former boyfriend gave her and in turn her family the level of notoriety that equals clout in Hollywood. Their mum Kris Jenner, now manager (‘momager’), 57 tomorrow, saw dollar signs and masterminded the show, which charts their far-from-average lives, a concept previously tried
and tested by their friends the Osbournes.

The three sisters are rarely interviewed together. Perhaps their publicity machine fears a three-way will slip into ‘The Kim Show’ – when it comes to media attention she wipes the floor. For starters, she is responsible for more than half their combined Twitter tally. She is the ninth most-followed tweeter in the world (Lady Gaga is number one, Barack Obama number six) – were she to tweet you there’s a possibility you’d quickly find yourself with a batch of new followers equal to the population of, say, Armenia, the girls’ ancestral homeland. So she has power, but she is softly spoken and she looks either tired or timid, eyeing me with huge, dark Disney eyes. In the flesh it is Khloé who makes the biggest impression, in part because she is at least six inches taller than her elder sisters, but also because she is the most forthright and animated.

Arriving early, Khloé kicks off her heels, checking first if I would mind, and launches into a commentary about her own Twitter feed. ‘People are so weird,’ she declares, while scrolling her phone with her manicured thumb. She’s come directly from an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America where she’d mentioned her struggle to conceive with husband Lamar Odom, a professional basketball player to whom she became engaged just a month after their meeting in 2009 (her attempts to get pregnant have been a running theme in season seven of Keeping Up With…, as well as on the couple’s own show, Khloé and Lamar). ‘Because of our show, people think they know me and they can tweet me anything,’ she continues. ‘But, hello, sometimes it’s so inappropriate. I mean, they’re describing the positions they’ve, you know, actually used to get pregnant. How am I meant to respond?’

For Kourtney, this is one of her first work commitments following the birth of her second child Penelope in July (she already has a two-year-old son Mason with partner Scott Disick). The babies
add an all-important ‘working mom’ dynamic to the Kardashians’ ability to sell things and a new dimension to the inter-sister relationship. (Viewers recently witnessed Kourtney telling Kim she’d chosen Khloé as Mason’s guardian because, ‘Khloé goes home at night and cooks dinner; you’re just all about Kim right now.’) In our interview Kourtney is midway through explaining how their different OCD traits work well in business when Kim interrupts her. ‘OK, you seriously need to go and get some perfume,’ while scrunching up her nose and wafting her hand in front of her face. Kourtney stops, makes a quick aside (‘we had a little feeding accident earlier’) and shoots Kim a look that only a mother of a four-month-old whose younger sister has pointed out that she smells of baby sick can. Moments later she is interrupted again as Kim moves to the other end of the sofa, shuffling Khloé along as she goes. Problem averted and proof that you can be the quietest and still be the drama queen.

Kourtney with her long-term partner, restaurateur Scott Disick, with whom she has two children, four-month-old Penelope, and Mason (right), who turns three next month

For fans of planet K, one of its great attractions is that, apart from their privileged upbringing and the constant jet-setting, the Kardashians also seem a little bit like the rest of us. There is little in the way of mystique – their brand is built on over-sharing and they film for 17 hours a day. ‘There is nothing we wouldn’t show; we film everything,’ says Khloé. ‘Except going to the bathroom,’ adds Kim. ‘Oh, that’s nice to mention, Kim,’ quips Kourtney. We see them roll out of bed in the morning and eating leftovers straight from the fridge; we’re with them for their weddings, their holidays, their bikini waxes, their dental appointments, and Kourtney has now given birth twice on the programme. 

‘We do have editing rights, we just don’t use them,’ says Khloé, claiming there is nothing they regret showing. ‘By the time any programme airs, everything we’ve been through is behind us, so whatever it is it’s not such an open wound,’ she says. Some must be harder to watch than others: their home videos document the build-up to and subsequent breakdown of Kim’s short-lived marriage to the conveniently monikered Kris Humphries. The wedding, in August 2011, was marred by controversy as Kim was accused of making more than £11 million from what critics deemed was a farce. So is there anything they’d never watch back? ‘No, because every season is so special to us,’ says Kim. ‘Each is a time period where there is something we were going through that means something in our lives, no matter what it is.’ 

In June, Helen Wright, headmistress of girls’ boarding school St Mary’s Calne in Wiltshire, declared at a teachers’ conference that an image of Kim Kardashian in her underwear on the cover of Zoo magazine represented ‘almost everything that is wrong with Western society today’. No one would deny the existence of superficiality in the world that the Kardashians inhabit, or the fact that Kim is a sex symbol who trades on her looks, but Wright’s comments fuelled debate over what it means to be a role model. Are working hard, looking good and behaving well not enough? I ask the sisters whether they worry about the pressure of being role models for the young women who will buy their dresses.  

‘You have to take responsibility for the role you’ve been given, and I think our brand is about empowering women,’ Kim says. ‘Just last night I was with some girlfriends and we were saying how much we enjoy encouraging women to start businesses.

‘I feel being a role model goes beyond fashion or body image. Yes, it’s about looking and feeling our best, not just in what we wear but in health and fitness and beauty, too. It’s about a strong work ethic, about being the best we can be every day.’

‘For me it’s about owning who we are,’ adds Khloé. ‘I mean, we are Armenian and I get people thanking me all the time for bringing awareness to the Armenian community. So we do stand for something – owning who you are no matter who that is.’

Kim with rapper boyfriend Kanye West - the couple have been nicknamed 'Kimye' by fans

Khloé with her husband Lamar Odom, who plays for the LA Clippers basketball team

Kim on her wedding day with Kris Humphries. The marriage lasted just 72 days

From left: sister Kylie, mother Kris, Kourtney, Lamar, Khloé, brother Robert, Kim, stepdad Bruce and sister Kendall

Who are the successful, stylish women that they admire? Kourtney cites women of the 70s: ‘Bianca Jagger, Ali MacGraw, oh, and I love Kate Moss.’ Kim? ‘Yeah, I mean, I think Kate Moss is amazing, but I don’t know… I don’t know if I have anyone,’ she says, before standing up to get Oreo cookies and a Diet Coke from the mini bar. ‘You don’t have anyone you look up to?’ asks Khloé, frowning and then continuing as if to prove a point: ‘I always watch documentaries on the Kennedys, and I love Jackie O,’ she says, ‘and Victoria Beckham. Did you see her collection at fashion week? She is phenomenal.’

One recent episode of Keeping Up With featured a family session with a therapist, though it strikes
me that the whole series is one big therapy session. The over-sharing can seem a tad intense, a bit claustrophobic; do they ever come up for air? ‘I don’t think claustrophobic is the word at all,’ says Kim. ‘I mean, we have so much going on, so many different projects, that if it wasn’t for the three of us being together I don’t know how we’d do it all.’ Who else do they hang out with, other than their partners? We see Scott and Lamar and glimpses of Kanye, but not many friends. ‘We don’t have that many,’ answers Kourtney. ‘We have a group of friends that we grew up with, and if they’re heading out with us they don’t mind being filmed, but they all have jobs,’ adds Kim.  

In addition to the constant conversations between family members, there is also the necessity to interact with fans via fan pages, Twitter, Chatroulette… Social media is vital to their success. Do they ever switch it all off and take time out from being a Kardashian? ‘It’s more difficult now with my boyfriend. We’re more noticeable now we’re together,’ says Kim. ‘And people may think all of us are over-communicating, but my boyfriend doesn’t have a phone so it’s easy to switch off.’ Kanye West doesn’t have a phone? ‘Yeah, it makes it easy.’

Kanye has also been a big influence on what her sisters describe as the ‘recent evolution of Kim’. She has said he has ‘inspired her to become an individual’, and as part of the TV show he presided over the clearance of her wardrobe (she sold her castoffs on Ebay) and the introduction of a sleeker look – he wants her to feature on best-dressed lists. Is she comfortable in her simpler style? Does she crave her old clothes or does she look back in horror at what she used to wear? ‘Oh, I do that all the time. I think, “If I’d worn that dress with one bangle, not necklaces and belts and earrings too, it would have looked so much better!”’ The effect Kanye has on Kardashian Kollection is probably a season down the line. ‘Our range is changing all the time,’ says Kim. ‘But we’ll always be able to pick a piece up and be like, “This is such a Khloé piece”, or “This is such a Kourtney piece.”’

I ask Kim what the future holds: will they still be designing in ten years’ time and where will they be in 30? ‘Oh my God, us in 30 years? Grandmas.’

The Kardashian Kollection will be available exclusively in selected Dorothy Perkins stores and online from Thursday 8th November.  For a chance to meet them in person head to Westfield London on Saturday 10th November - for further information visit dorothyperkins.com