CALABASAS, California – “I’ll try anything,” Kim Kardashian said last month during an interview in her huge office here. It houses a photo studio, an exhibition hall, a video room, staff offices, your personal office, a glam room (where you prepare for photos), a glam model room (where models prepare for filming), a conference room, a theater and more. “If you told me I literally had to eat poop every day and it looked younger, it could be. It just might be.”
For now, excrement is not one of the ingredients in Ms. Kardashian’s new skin care line.
But vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, glycolic and lactic acid, shea butter and squalene are among the most traditional ingredients you’ll find at Kim’s SKKN, which debuts later this month. . Skin care is a novelty for Ms. Kardashian, who is 41 years old. (Previously, she sold fragrances and makeup through KKW Beauty and KKW Fragrance, both of which have disappeared). His first nine products are a mirror of his own regime, which is meticulous in fact.
Why does the woman who brought the concept of contouring to the world want to start with skin care instead of, well, contouring to get back to beauty? Simple: Mrs. Kardashian wants to show off the tone and texture of her own skin. Up close, it’s something to contemplate: bright, hydrated, and soft.
“I wanted to stay true to what I wear, even if everyone said this is overwhelming,” said Ms. Kardashian, who wore a black Balenciaga sweatshirt and black Yeezy foam pool slides with total glamor: camera-ready makeup and straight platinum blonde hair that reaches to her waist.
Despite being late for the thousands of steps regimes popularized by Korean skin care brands, Ms. Kardashian is doing a long routine. His nine-step system “may seem daunting to some,” he said. “That’s why I’m here, to break it down, to say, ‘Everyone is needed.'” If any steps need to be removed, there are exfoliants (there are two), which, depending on your skin, do not require daily use.
SKKN products are considerably more expensive than most skin care products, created by celebrities or not. (A hyaluronic acid serum and a night oil cost between $ 90 and $ 95.) Collectively, the nine items: cleanser, toner, exfoliator, hyaluronic acid serum, vitamin C serum, face cream, eye cream eyes, drops of oil and night oil totaling $ 630. It’s a price that may be out of reach for many of its potential customers and 313 million Instagram followers. (All products are refillable and replacement pods cost approximately 15 percent less than the original packaging).
Mrs. Kardashian doesn’t care much about people not being able to afford her skin care.
“It’s definitely more prestige, and in order to get the kind of ingredients that I wouldn’t really miss, it was kind of a necessity,” he said. “The products I used that were comparable were much more expensive, not to compare anything. I tried to get quality at the best price we could, especially vitamin C serum.”
Mrs. Kardashian’s office, with displays of beauty, is chaotic. Almost all surfaces are covered with prototypes of products and packaging. The messy scene is at odds with the rest of his tidy workspace on several levels. He offered a look at the planned products, which include makeup, perfumes, bath accessories and household items (“a lifestyle,” he said). Everything has a “stone effect” and the bottles, jars and more have a neutral color scheme, as does their Skims modeling brand.
“It’s not just a part of my job, it’s who I am.”
Mrs. Kardashian’s appearance is a source of fascination that has been focused on her physique for decades. Perpetual fluctuations and the evolution of her weight, her dramatic proportions, her ass, waist, lips, cheekbones, hair and makeup are key to audience participation.
“So many people want to act like they don’t care how they look,” he said. “I am not acting as if it were easier or more natural. Just don’t wake up and use whatever it is. You wake up, you use ingredients. PRP facials, stem cell facials, lasers, it’s all work. “
Mrs. Kardashian’s whole business is image, and she’s taken seriously. His net worth, estimated at more than a billion dollars, is based on his body. His face. His gaze. Everything else is an extension of that. Her physical appearance and willingness to manipulate her is her career, whether it’s fitting in a dress or spending 18 hours dyeing her hair platinum.
She has been in the news for years trying out extreme beauty treatments. Remember when he posted a selfie of his bloody face after undergoing a “vampire facial”?
Mrs. Kardashian is often credited with changing modern beauty standards, and this was not because of her fidelity to a particular cream or serum. She is not a dermatologist or beautician. So why should anyone take their skin care products seriously?
“I think the credibility of knowing that I received the best advice and the best formulations from some of the people I respect the most,” Ms. Kardashian. With Skims, he said, he wanted to find solutions that he felt were missing in the market. For her skin care line, she was looking for solutions to her daily skin problems.
Over the years, Ms. Kardashian said, she has tried almost every product and treatment for high-end skin care in the beauty aisle: R&D integrated by SKKN. To develop her formulas, she worked with Joanna Czech, a famous beautician and facialist who has her own skin care line.
Mrs. Czech, who has more than 35 years of experience, advised on a vocabulary for skin care (do not use the term “anti-aging”); taught Ms. Kardashian about different molecule sizes and versions of vitamin C; and helped redesign the products to comply with European Union skin care regulations.
“There were not three tests of one product, there were 23,” Ms Czech said, noting that achieving the optimal consistency for each serum, especially the oils, was the most difficult.
Ms Czech, who said the products were “created from scratch”, added: “People don’t expect more from celebrities than olive oil.”
Most celebrity brands are little more than a famous face that lends its name to a product and promotes it online, making it much more difficult for the few celebrities who are actually involved in their businesses. Kylie Jenner introduced Kylie Skin in 2019, an extension of her Kylie Cosmetics brand, and went online after it appeared to be based on a video promoting her face wash; that same year, Kendall Jenner became Proactiv’s ambassador and received a negative reaction because the association was perceived as “not authentic.”
But Ms. Kardashian is unaffected by the public’s perception of celebrity and influencer lines. Think about what he did with Skims, a modeling giant that was valued at $ 3.2 billion as of January.
Mrs. Kardashian has similar views for SKKN. “People might have assumed at first that Skims was a famous clothing brand, no doubt,” he said. “I understand, but once they got the product, I think they realized it was a product-based brand. I’ve been able to get access to skin treatments and stuff, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. It’s like sharing my solutions, like I did with Skims. “
“The glow of a lifetime”
Kim’s SKKN is Mrs. Kardashian’s most ambitious adventure in beauty, but it’s far from her first. Her previous beauty lines were disparate undertakings, not all of them successful. There was KKW Fragrance, a line of emoji-themed kitsch perfumes; and KKW Beauty, a makeup collection.
It closed both: KKW Fragrance in April; KKW Beauty, last summer. The French beauty conglomerate Coty, which had a minority investment in KKW Beauty, will help expand Kim’s SKKN internationally and will be a resource for things like packaging, Ms. Kardashian.
Vanessa Reggiardo, CEO of the SKKN brand at Coty, said the line has been extensively tested by consumers and is “formulated to take care of all skin types, shades and textures at every stage of maturity, for use by both men and women. ”
Ms. Kardashian plans to consolidate and eventually relaunch her other beauty and lifestyle products with a single SKKN brand from Kim. A new website, skknbykim.com, will be the only place to buy your new skin care. Kim’s SKKN will be available at a major beauty retailer next year, she said. (Details are still being finalized.)
For now, potential customers will need to rely on online content and tutorials before ordering a $ 95 facial oil, which, when mixed with face cream, will give you, he said, “the glow of a lifetime.”
She wants to prove it.
After reviewing SKKN samples, Ms. Kardashian went to the bathroom to wash her face and remove makeup from a previous photo shoot. She put her mermaid hair in a giant claw clip and made an abbreviated version of her night skin care routine. She cleaned, exfoliated and caressed her face with a mixture of shiny oil and face cream.
“Always down to the chest, to the nipples, always to the nipples,” Mrs. Kardashian said, massaging the emulsion into her neck, neckline, and upper half of her breasts. Expect to follow a wave of TikTok tutorials, with influencers taking their skin care regimen “to the fullest,” as Ms. Kardashian does.
Does exercising this kind of influence ever become an albatross?
Asked about the controversy surrounding her significant weight loss to fit her Met Gala outfit, the same sheer, dazzling dress Marilyn Monroe wore in 1962 when she sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy , Mrs. Kardashian said, “For me, it was like, ‘Okay, Christian Bale can do it for a film role and that’s acceptable.’ The same thing happens to me.