What follows is my introduction for Icon's interview with Kim Kardashian. For more on the worlds of entertainment and fashion, subscribe to Icon Magazine.
The family sitcom has gathered Americans around their televisions for decades. Most everyone did indeed love "Raymond", want to be part of the "Full House" or see what "All in the Family" and its spin-offs were going to do next. Where Maude and Uncle Jesse got to hang up their hats and resume private life after each taping, most modern screen families don't see that luxury. Since the millennium, mainstream programming has undergone a reality makeover and its reigning champion is E! Network's "Keeping Up With the Kardashians", led by none other than its princess, Kim.
Kim makes headlining this breed of show look easy. Some may challenge, "Hey, I have a family, why not 'keep up' with me?" To those challengers: try maintaining Kim's level of charisma - or her admirable air of modesty in the face of high-profile fame and fortune - 24/7 while putting your deepest personal predicaments and family foibles up for mass scrutiny. Yeah, Kim makes it look easy, but each moment before unrelenting "Keeping Up" cameras is a demanding one. What's more, the celebutante founded high-end clothing boutique Dash, continues to design and tirelessly promote her own fashions and fragrances and during her show's off-season still makes appearances on her sisters' program, "Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami". She's a brave, beautiful and busy girl.
Born and raised in Los Angeles the daughter of famed defense attorney Robert Kardashian, Kim was intentionally denied certain luxuries to teach the values of work-ethic. With these parental lessons at heart, she networked with the social elite and became a stylist in Paris Hilton's entourage. At 5' 2" and a voluptuous 35-26-40, Kim became a camera magnet and earned her own slice of the glitterati spotlight. Before long she was launched to household-name levels of notoriety.
Still ascending ladders of fashion and fame with no end in sight, Kim Kardashian keeps a few secrets in her clutch for maintaining simultaneous success and style, along with a nugget or three regarding current and upcoming projects.
