Paris Hilton was (and still is) the poster child of the millennium. That’s hot.
This story appears in i-D issue 375, on newsstands September 22.
An elevator door at the Waldorf Astoria dings open, and Paris Hilton emerges, smiling. She’s wearing a baby blue mini skirt and a matching blazer set with bedazzled buttons, plus white stiletto heels, which bring her in at just over six feet. Her blonde barrel curls bounce with every step, and a gaggle of camerapeople and assistants hurry behind her carrying ring lights and trays of Starbucks.
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Jacket, top, skirt, and necklace VAQUERA, Shoes MARC JACOBS
She is the quintessential image of the bubbly Hilton hotel heiress we’ve come to know and love: The poster child of the early 2000s, who never takes anything that seriously and always has a cute, fun, carefree time. But Paris Hilton is so much more than a baby-voiced persona now, and she’s done some serious work in the last five years to prove that to herself and others. She’s a survivor, a wife, a “sliving mom” (a “mum who slays”), a businesswoman, and probably one of the only people to both headline World Pride in Washington, D.C.and testify before the United States Congress. Once she nails the shot, she hangs up the phone and takes five to compose herself before her next act.
The last time I saw Hilton was in 2017—a “lifetime ago,” as she describes it. Early-2000s style was making its first real comeback, and everyone was becoming an influencer, or “famous for being famous,” as Hilton was often accused. It was clear that Paris had become the blueprint for a new type of celebrity, from selfies to building a personal brand to reality TV stardom, and deserved some credit for it. Even Kim Kardashian was her personal assistant once. (Bethenny Frankel of The Real Housewives of New York City was also her nanny.)
“We started a whole new genre of celebrity that no one had ever seen before,” Hilton told me at the time. She was famous before we had terms like “nepo baby,” and before culture had written her off as a “hot mess.” But she knew exactly what she was doing and, impressively, made it all happen without the help of a stylist, a glam squad, a publicist, or social media.
Recognition as the poster child of the early 2000s didn’t seem to satisfy her, though. At least, not on a deep personal level. Watching her 2020 documentary, This Is Paris, which was released in the middle of the pandemic and went mostly overlooked, she introduces us to a woman trapped and exhausted by the persona she so successfully created—or the “fantasy world cartoon,” as she describes her likeness in the film. Hilton may have been ahead of her time, but where did that leave her as an adult? What happens to a poster child when she’s all grown up?
For so long, no matter what I did in my life, or how much I had accomplished, people only saw me as The Simple Life character.
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All clothing and accessories KARL LAGERFELD
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“For so long, no matter what I did in my life, or how much I had accomplished, people only saw me as The Simple Life character,” she says at the Waldorf, one of her family’s most famous properties, which everyone from Frank Sinatra to Marilyn Monroe to Hilton herself once considered home. “I wanted to show that there’s much more to me.”
Now, a 44-year-old mother of two with 30 fragrances, a skincare line, her own media company (11:11 Media, which has 30 employees), and her third studio album in the works, Paris Hilton has finally found her voice. With This Is Paris (2020) and Paris: The Memoir (2023), Hilton revealed for the first time the numerous traumas she experienced as a young woman, including at the boarding schools for “troubled teens” she was sent to, where she says she endured physical and emotional abuse, such as being force-fed medications, non-consensual medical exams, solitary confinement, and other horrors that gave her recurring nightmares as an adult. Both are upsetting and uncomfortable for fans to consume—not what you’d expect from the queen of bubble-gum pink and rainbows—and lead me to think more critically about what makes a poster child. Why does our culture even consider a “poster” an acceptable thing for a child to be?
“It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” Hilton tells me, seemingly less exhausted and more confident than the last time I saw her. She speaks in her natural octave, slipping into a baby voice only occasionally for her more Paris Hilton-y lines, like, “I feel like I can just be me and sparkle,” and perhaps also out of nervousness. “It’s been life-changing. I’m so proud of the strong woman I am and what I’ve been through, and it’s been extremely therapeutic and healing.”
In June 2024, Hilton spoke about her experiences as a teenager in front of Congress, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected that I would be literally passing federal bills and changing laws,” she says. (The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which is backed by Hilton and aims to improve the oversight and regulation of youth residential treatment facilities, was signed into law in December of 2024.) It’s her advocacy work that she hopes to be remembered for, not her Simple Life cameos, and she describes it as the “most meaningful work of [her] life.”
“When I’m walking through the halls of Congress, and I’m in D.C., that’s when I’m Serious Paris,” she explains now, sipping a grande chai latte with oat milk from a straw. “But I love to play with my image as well. That’s always been a big part of my brand—having fun with it. So there’s a time and place for everything. The sparkly, playful side will always be a part of me.”
Hilton defines “poster child” as being “the perfect example of something.” It’s a reminder that her first-ever role was one she was born into, as the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the American hotel magnate who founded the international hospitality group bearing their family name. Having “Hilton” written in big letters across thousands of buildings worldwide came with “a lot of pressure, just wanting to make my family really proud of me,” she explains. She remembers running through the Waldorf, where Michael Jackson and his kids lived down the hall, and seeing paintings of her great-grandfather, Conrad Hilton, on the wall. “Nicky [her sister] and I would walk by and be like, ‘Hi, Papa.’”
As an adult, Hilton was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Adderall. “Growing up as a teenager, no one was really talking about it, and if they were, it was like, ‘Oh, those are the bad kids who can’t concentrate, and they fail,’” she says of the condition. She struggled to focus on school and was drawn to New York’s fashion and nightlife scene instead, leading her to put on a wig and sneak out of the Waldorf through the service lifts as often as possible. “The first time I experienced going to a club environment, I was 12,” she writes in her memoir.
Because of her “bad” behaviour, Hilton was sent to her first troubled teen programme in 1997, when she was 16. She remembers two men coming into her room at the Waldorf in the middle of the night and dragging her out of bed by her ankles, as her parents watched from the hallway. These strangers proceeded to put her in the back of an SUV, and then on a plane, making her think she was being kidnapped. In reality, she was on her way to CEDU, a program in California that her parents signed her up for because they thought it would “save her life.”
On The Simple Life, Hilton and her co-star, Nicole Richie, act as though they’ve never done manual labour in their lives. But for Hilton, at least, that was an act. At CEDU and the three other facilities that Hilton was sent to (she attempted escape from every single one, except for the last, Provo Canyon School, where she was placed in solitary confinement after the staff discovered her plans), she mopped the floors and scrubbed toilets. “Rebellious types slept on mattresses in the hall with the lights on and doors open,” she writes of Provo. “Staff came along once in a while to poke us to make sure we were breathing—or just because—so I never really slept.
I just drifted in and out of this weird, twitchy state of semi-consciousness. My body was constantly on the alert, wired to wake up the instant someone touched me. If I dozed off, I went to a shallow nightmare place, haunted by an icky awareness of being watched.”
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Jacket, skirt, gloves, belt, and shoes BALENCIAGA, Tights stylist’s own
For so long, no matter what I did in my life, or how much I had accomplished, people only saw me as the Simple Life character.
When she was finally free at 18, she was determined to make a million dollars and prove her parents and abusers wrong. The character of “Paris Hilton” that she created was her “ticket to financial freedom and a safe place to hide,” she writes. Also: “My sexy clothes, music, videos—the whole Carl’s Jr. burger-eating routine—that was my way of reclaiming a healthy sexuality that had been robbed from me.” But no matter how hard she partied or how much money she made, her nightmares followed her. Her experiences as a teenager left her with deep trust issues, combined with an overwhelming desire to be loved, and she found herself in a series of other toxic relationships as a young adult––including with the press.
“During the 2000s, the media was so misogynistic—they would target certain girls, and there was a small group of us that they would constantly berate and abuse,” she tells me, still clearly upset by how she was treated. (The New York Post headline “Bimbo Summit” comes to mind, as does the genre of “upskirt” photos, which critic Sophie Gilbert reminds readers of in her new book, Girl on Girl, about pop culture in the 2000s.) “It was extremely difficult to grow up in that way, having those few people who controlled the media control our storylines. Now, what I love about social media is that people can actually find out from the source, and that I can write my own story.”
In a way, Hilton’s output since 2020—the documentary, the memoir—can be seen as an extended, long-form version of her selfies, which she describes in her book as another tool to reclaim her narrative. “Shame is something that adults will try to instill into children to keep them quiet; it’s a very powerful muzzle and protects the abusers,” Hilton says, slipping into Serious Paris. “So, for me to now know that as a little girl, I never should have been ashamed—it’s the people and the adults that hurt me who should be—that’s such an important message for so many other girls out there to hear as well. Growing up, especially as a teenage girl, if something bad happens to you, you blame yourself, even though it wasn’t your fault. I really wanted to get that out there to girls who’ve been through the same thing: That they can tell their story and feel safe too, and be believed.”
Perched in an office at the Waldorf, Hilton thinks back to a lunch she once had with her grandpa, who died in 2019. “I used to be known as Barron Hilton,” she recalls him saying, “and now I’m known as Paris Hilton’s grandpa.”
It was what she always wanted to accomplish: to be known as Paris, not just a Hilton. Now that she’s shared her whole story, she feels more in control of the image she created. She’s using it for good and to participate in projects she’s personally passionate about. This summer, she became the face of Karl Lagerfeld. (When she first met Karl, he apparently told her he loved The Simple Life.) The week I saw her, she’d just headlined WeHo Pride and World Pride in D.C., and was working on a music documentary called Infinite Icon, the title of her last album. She’s also got a new children’s animated series called Paris & Pups in the works, so that her kids can watch a show that is “inspiring, kind, and sweet—and teaches them good morals.”
Hilton is “busier than ever” and will bring her kids, Phoenix, who is two, and London, who is one, to meetings with her whenever she can. But she mostly enjoys being at home with them, “with no makeup on, just chilling in a tracksuit,” she says. A Juicy Couture one? “No, Paris Hilton label.” Growth!
Currently, she’s making plans to take the kids on their first flight on “Sliv Air,” the pink private plane Hilton’s husband, venture capitalist Carter Reum, bought her. (They married in November 2021; Britney Spears was at the wedding.) She’ll also move out of her “content house” in Beverly Hills, famously the site of the Bling Ring robbery, and into a new family home in Los Angeles. “We’re building another doggy mansion,” she assures me, which is good news for Diamond, Baby, Crypto, and Ether.
To see Y2K rear its bedazzled head over and over again—the teeny-tiny tank tops, low-rise jeans, butterfly clips, and baguette bags—doesn’t seem to bother Hilton. In fact, she loves the TikToks, so keep ‘em coming. “It’s so cool to see so many people recreating all those looks,” she says, slipping into her Paris Hilton voice again and tilting her head with a big smile. “I love inspiring other people to follow their dreams and to sparkle and to be unapologetic. There has never been such a fun time in fashion, so I feel like it will always be around for people who want to take risks. I love that. And I love that it all leads back to me.”
