Back in the early Aughts, the mogul was busy starring in The Simple Life with her best friend Nicole Richie, partying her way around the globe, shopping up a storm at Kitson on Melrose, and honing a distinctive, kitschy, kitten-heeled aesthetic that would come to define the decade.
Some 20 years on, Paris is happily immersing herself in the wardrobe of her twenty-something self once more, as she unveils her interactive House of Y2K pop-up with Klarna in LA. “One of my favourite looks from that time was actually a dress I wore to the Vogue Fashion Awards in 2001,” Hilton says over the phone from California. “It was beautiful red silk and I wore it with a big diamanté choker. My sister Nicky wore a different version in the same colour – we used to have so much fun dressing like twins back then.”
Paris also cites perhaps her most famous look as a favourite: the silver chainmail Julien Macdonald minidress she wore to celebrate her 21st birthday in 2002. The outfit was memorably revived by Kendall Jenner, who commissioned a custom version of Paris’s minidress by LaBourjoisie for her own 21st birthday in 2017. “It’s the most iconic dress in the world – I’m in love with it,” says Paris now.
US-based fans of the star will be able to see the era-defining dress up close at Paris’s pop-up, a collaboration with the bank, payments and shopping service Klarna, along with a multitude of other looks from back when she was storming Melrose Avenue with Tinkerbell the chihuahua tucked under her arm. Hilton, who announced the birth of her first child, a boy, last month, opened up her archive for the installation, which spans three themes: fashion, beauty and tech. “I’ve brought out some of my most iconic looks… outfits from The Simple Life, the handbags, the Sidekicks,” Paris says. “I have a huge storage area where I’ve kept a lot of pieces for my daughter, whenever I have a little girl.”
These days, of course, shopping looks quite different for the mum of one, who married venture capitalist Carter Reum in November 2021, floating down the aisle at her late grandfather’s former Bel-Air estate wearing custom Oscar de la Renta. “I used to love to go out shopping, it was so much fun for me,” she says. “But now that I’m running my company [11:11 Media] my schedule is so packed, I literally don’t have time anymore. Now, I love online shopping, which is one of the reasons I was so excited when Klarna invited me to do this.”
Hilton has also reinvented one of her most established millennium style signatures – the rhinestone-embellished velour tracksuit – as part of the project. The limited-edition sets (emblazoned with “That’s smooth” – a version of her “That’s hot” catchphrase updated to reflect the post dial-up internet-era online shopping experience), are available exclusively through the Klarna app for $225, with 100 per cent of the proceeds going to Hilton’s non-profit, 11:11 Media Impact.
Tracksuits aside, Paris’s personal wardrobe has evolved now that she’s a wife and mother. “I was actually looking through my closet recently and donating things I won’t ever wear again,” she explains. She still loves all things pink and sparkly (see her recent runway cameo at Versace), but now the star’s preferred vibe when it comes to fashion is “hot housewife”, she says, laughing. “Hot mom.” Hilton points to another hot mom as one of her most long-standing style icons: Victoria Beckham. “I always loved VB’s style back in her Spice Girls days, she was so fun and sexy,” says Paris. “And now she’s so elegant and chic.”
As she readies herself to dive back into 2002 at her House of Y2K, Paris says it’s too hard to single out a particular highlight from the decade. But given the chance to relive one of those heady days, she’d go back to the set of season one of her reality show, The Simple Life. “It was so much fun being with my best friend and having all these adventures.”
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