Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian

by Jenner, Kris

  Spin-off show: Check!

  Kim wasn’t involved in the spin-off show. She was so busy with everything else that was going on. As I mentioned earlier, Kim and I would regularly sit down and talk about our goals. A recurring one for her as well as for me: her own fragrance line.

  “Wouldn’t that just be the dream come true?” we asked each other. “Wouldn’t that be amazing if we could turn this into something that would be forever and real—a product and a business?”

  The fragrance, Kim Kardashian, was an instant hit. The scent is a mix of jasmine, gardenia, and sandalwood, and we marketed the perfume as classic, glamorous, sexy, and feminine—just like Kim. The marketing tagline is “Kim Kardashian: The voluptuous new fragrance.” The launch party at Sephora in Las Vegas was in February of 2010 and it was packed; one guy even got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend in front of Kim! After the launch at Sephora, there was an after party at Tao nightclub at the Venetian, and they rolled out a huge cake that was an exact replica of Kim’s perfume bottle. Before Kim Kardashian went on the shelves, Kim was already gearing up to do her second fragrance, Gold.

  Kim’s (first) fragrance, Kim Kardashian: Check!

  This was such an amazing experience for all of us that I would later develop a deal for Khloé and her husband, Lamar, for a unisex fragrance of their own called Unbreakable.

  The next project I wanted to tackle was skin care. Everyone compliments our family on our skin, so it just seemed like a natural next step. We knew skin care was something they would all be proud of and love. I was able to find a partner with a lab that could enable the girls to develop their own skin care line. I would love for all the girls, at some point in their careers, to have makeup endorsements, like a L’Oréal contract or something similar, and each have her own skin care line. That’s a dream we haven’t realized yet, but I felt like one skin care line could be a precursor, and I really felt all my experience with infomercials and back-end marketing would help. We were able to develop a skin care line called PerfectSkin, and we shot an infomercial for it. It was a success.

  The girls all have slightly different skin types, and PerfectSkin is a three-step line geared toward busy women with different skin types: oily, dry, sensitive, etc.

  PerfectSkin skin care line: Check!

  Another thing I had dreamed of doing with my daughters was a clothing line. The girls had their DASH clothing stores in L.A. and Miami by now, and they each had a gift for fashion. It was all about timing at this point. Once the fragrance was off the ground, then the next dream to tackle was the clothing line. It took three years to get this together. I believe in doing my due diligence and I researched the history of the different companies, the levels of marketing, retail, and what might be the best fit for us. Was it going to be mass-market? Mid-tier? I wanted to go to the professionals with already successful clothing lines and get their advice, because I really believe in talking to people and experiencing the whole gamut of trying to put something like this together. For three years I researched the entire retail market.

  By then we were about to start out the sixth season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. We finally identified our retail partner: Sears.

  I have fond memories of Sears when I was a little girl shopping with my grandmother for holidays and special occasions. I’ve been going to Sears since I could walk. It’s yet another surreal thing to me that my girls are going to have a clothing line, the Kardashian Kollection, in an iconic store. The girls will have their very own line, and it’s going to be a store-in-store setup so that the customer can go into a Sears store and have a Kardashian experience. They’re actually building Kardashian stores inside every Sears location. That’s one of the things I’m proudest of, because we spent a long time putting a lot of care and thought into developing a line that reflects the girls. One hint: they’re going to have shoes named after different metropolitan cities to reflect their fans and all the places they travel.

  Clothing line: Check!

  Still, as we checked off goals on our mutual wish lists, there was one thing missing for my daughter Khloé.

  As I’ve written in previous chapters, Khloé struggled most visibly with her father’s death. Just before Robert died, Khloé was so distraught over his illness that she couldn’t even visit him. When he passed away, she lost all of her hair. I felt hopeless and helpless; I couldn’t make Khloé snap out of her intense grief. When we started filming Keeping Up with the Kardashians, it was a godsend for Khloé. Her father’s death still felt fresh to her at the time, and the show was a big distraction. She could focus on something productive and she felt like she might be able to move on instead of being stuck in a helpless place.

  Still, that first season of the show proves that Khloé was still struggling, including the episode in which she got her DUI. We were all so shocked over her DUI, because that really wasn’t who my kids were. My kids aren’t alcoholics or drug addicts. They love to have a good time, for sure. We all do. But Khloé and her sisters have always been extremely responsible. They’ve made mistakes, they may not always make the right decisions, but they are definitely good girls. So to see Khloé fall apart like that was really hard on the rest of us, because we just really wanted the best for Khloé. Part of this was wanting her to find someone she really cared about.

  Khloé was the girl who never fell in love.

  She never brought any boys home.

  She never even hinted that she might be in love with somebody.

  Kim was the hopeless romantic, always dating various guys and falling for someone. Kourtney found her boyfriend, Scott, at a young age. Khloé was still growing up, still trying to figure out life, still trying to figure out who she was. Yet, nobody was more loving, giving, or adorable than Khloé. Nobody was more generous, kind, funny, funny, funny, funny, while also being very strong. She obviously learned to grow some thick skin and she was very vocal about how she felt about things. She was never one to shy away from giving her opinion.

  Still, I never expected Khloé to fall head over heels in love, but I always knew that whoever she ended up with would be getting the most amazing wife, mother, companion, and friend that anyone could ever want. Because that is just who Khloé is.

  I knew that eventually Khloé was going to be okay, but I obviously always worried about her finding someone, as I did for each of my girls. In my generation, everybody got married when they were in their early twenties and then had kids. But my kids were well into their twenties, and nobody was getting married.

  After three seasons of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, we moved to our third house in Hidden Hills, the house where our show is filmed now, a sprawling cream-colored Mediterranean-style house with a huge green front lawn—yet another dream house come true. Ever since we had moved from our first house in Hidden Hills, Kendall and Kylie begged me to get their old house back. They wanted to live back on that street. They loved everything about that street: the location, the acreage, the houses. I felt like I was failing them because they weren’t living where they wanted to live. I just wanted to make my kids happy. So I started looking for a bigger house back on that street. Lo and behold, I found an amazing house on our same street, and it was bigger and better than I could’ve ever imagined. I was so happy that I had found this place and was able to make a deal and buy the house. Nobody knew I had bought this house except Bruce and me.

  On Christmas morning, 2008, we were at our old house opening gifts. When all the gifts were opened, Bruce and I said, “Well, Kendall and Kylie, we have one last present for you.” We jammed everybody into Bruce’s Escalade and we all drove over to the new house. We pulled up out front, and I think at first my little kids thought that we were going to see a horse, because we live in horse country, and they thought they were getting a pony or something. I whipped out the keys and opened the front door, and Bruce screamed, “Merry Christmas, family! Welcome to your new home!” Everybody went running through the house, screaming and yelling. I will neve
r forget that morning.

  One of the best things about moving into that new house was that it gave my older kids, one by one, the opportunity to live in our old house for a while while we were trying to sell it. First, Rob lived there for a few months. Then Kim needed to live there for six months while she scoured Los Angeles, looking for her own dream house to buy. A year later, it was Khloé’s turn to move into that house. Finally, Kourtney and Scott moved in while they were looking for a new home of their own.

  Life was going as usual, and everyone was working very hard.

  One day in August 2009, while we were gearing up to start shooting Season Four, Khloé came over.

  “Mom, I left a name at the gate,” she said. “I have a friend coming over. When he gets here, let me know.”

  Khloé was doing a magazine interview in my family room, so when the doorbell rang, I opened the door. I looked out the door, and then I had to look up higher . . . and higher . . . until I was looking up about three feet, because there was a six-foot-ten guy standing on my doorstep. I was looking at Lamar Odom. Of course, I knew that Lamar Odom was the star forward for the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. But Khloé hadn’t told me that the “friend” coming to the house was Lamar Odom. She had told me her friend “Lamar” was coming over to say hi.

  “Hey, Lamar,” I said as he came walking into the house.

  My girlfriend Lisa Miles was there that day. Lisa was always taking me to Lakers games. Her eyes grew really big and she shot me a look.

  “What’s Lamar Odom doing here?” she asked.

  “I have no idea!” I said.

  We watched Lamar walk in and find Khloé, and they started talking. Lisa and I found this all very interesting. I thought, Wow, Khloé has a new friend. She didn’t talk about it much that day, but before I knew it, a week later she was asking me to go to dinner with her and Lamar. Then there was another dinner, and another.

  Two weeks passed. We were shooting the first couple of days of Season Four when I had the shock of my life: On camera, Khloé and Lamar asked to take me to dinner, and at dinner, Lamar told me he wanted to marry Khloé. He basically asked for Khloé’s hand in marriage. I was stunned and wildly excited—

  “Mommy, I’m in love,” she said. “Lamar is the guy for me. He’s the love of my life. I just know it in my heart.”

  Lamar proposed to Khloé in our backyard, during a dinner with a bunch of our friends and family. Khloé was sitting in a chair in the backyard, and Lamar came over to her and went down on one knee. He pulled open a velvet box with a beautiful engagement ring, and everyone was shocked. Khloé was so excited.

  It’s funny. Now that I think back on it, I didn’t doubt for a second that this was the love of Khloé’s life. She had never told me she was in love before. She had never brought anybody home. She had never told me she was happy like that before. She had never said all the things she said to me then. That’s all she needed to say to me. Honestly, the moment I met Lamar, I knew he was the one. He was delicious, and I knew he adored Khloé.

  Still, as they say, I hadn’t heard nothin’ yet. Khloé and Lamar went on to explain to me that, for several reasons, they had decided they wanted to get married on September 27. They just had to get married before Lamar started his basketball season. It was their one-month anniversary. They had other reasons. When it all sunk in, I gasped.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, cameras rolling. “September 27 is in only nine days!”

  “Yes, Mommy, we want to get married in nine days,” said Khloé.

  Oh. My. God. My mind instantly went crazy making lists. We needed a dress, a cake, a location, a pastor, a caterer, bridesmaids, a registry, flowers, invitations. I needed help. So I did the only thing I knew to do: I called my best friend, Shelli Azoff. Shelli said to call Sharon Sacks, the amazing wedding planner.

  “Can you get over here right now?” I asked Sharon. “We have a nine-one-one wedding coming up. I have nine days to pull this off.”

  Sharon was there within the hour. Simultaneously, I was on the phone with Vera Wang, who, thank God, I’d met fifteen years prior, when she and Bruce were both judges at the Miss America Pageant. She and I had been friends ever since.

  “Vera,” I said, rattling on about the nine days and the lists rolling through my mind. “Can you help me?”

  “Get Khloé on a plane today,” Vera said. “I would love to design her dress, and I’ll do all of the bridesmaids, and of course I’ll do yours.”

  We made Khloé’s reservations on the spot. Within an hour, cameras still rolling, we bought tickets for Khloé and a girlfriend and they were on their way to New York for fittings with Vera Wang. I stayed behind with Sharon to plan the wedding and to get Khloé organized. She returned home within forty-eight hours. Khloé just wanted to get married and she didn’t care about a big party. She would have been happy going to Vegas. So I planned the whole wedding with Sharon. It was pretty much my dream wedding. You would have thought I was the bride.

  Khloé was going to have the wedding of a lifetime, and, of course, we would be able to capture it on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

  Of course, the wedding featured the usual Kardashian chaos. During the pre-wedding prep, there was plenty of drama and absolute pandemonium, yet Khloé would actually send orders to me via her BlackBerry, even though she was usually standing right next to me. Kylie passed Khloé’s BlackBerry back and forth between us.

  The ceremony itself is what I’ll always remember. I sat in the front row with Bruce. I was clutching Bruce’s hand, with my handkerchief ready. Lamar had the biggest smile on his face as Bruce walked Khloé down the aisle. Khloé was surrounded by her sisters, now her bridesmaids, all wearing gorgeous lavender Vera Wang dresses. Khloé looked so, so beautiful, and Bruce walked her down the aisle and gave her away. It was one of the greatest moments of my life, watching my daughter get married to the man she loved. We will have these memories forever because of the show, which was the most-watched episode in the history of the network. Otherwise, we might not fully know what happened, because the nine-day wedding craziness was as chaotic as it was wonderful. It was fast and furious, but it was right—romantic and wonderful. If you had told me that I would be ecstatic about my daughter coming home and telling me she was getting married in nine days, I never would have believed you. But it has always been my dream for each of my daughters to get married and find happiness.

  Finally, I could say that for at least one of them: Check!

  Kourtney, meanwhile, had had someone special in her life for quite a while: Scott. Scott had been courting Kourtney back when we started shooting Season One. I wasn’t sure about Scott. He was really handsome and really smooth, and he seemed like a little bit of a bad boy. I had had my share of bad boys myself, of course, so I knew one when I saw one. I wasn’t going to let this kid come in and take my precious Kourtney for a wild ride. If there was anything that I could do to protect her heart, I was going to do it. I wanted him to know that I was paying attention.

  As I got to know Scott a little bit better, our relationship evolved. Now I adore him, but it was a rocky road in the very beginning. He was still a kid. He’s only twenty-six now, so when we started the show, he was more like twenty-two. A baby. I had some experience with twenty-two-year-old babies, and I think I might have taken that out a little bit on Scott. Looking at him, I thought, Hmmm, this feels familiar. I could not forget my experience with Ryan. But that wasn’t Scott’s fault.

  Scott was also drinking then. His drinking culminated in an incident that was (of course) filmed in an episode of our show. The whole family had gone to Vegas for Kim’s birthday. We had really been looking forward to letting our hair down and just being together. Scott got drunk. I had business associates with us, and I decided to cut him off. He asked the waiter for more alcohol, and I told the waiter, “Don’t serve him. He’s gone way too far.” That really upset Scott, and he got so worked up that he shoved a $100 bill down the waiter’s throat, demanding to b
e served.

  It was a powerful moment, both for the show and for our family, and a definite wake-up call for Kourtney. She knew Scott needed help. We wanted Scott to be okay. I don’t think that exactly came across in the show. But by that time, we had all fallen in love with Scott, and we didn’t want someone we loved to be in trouble or hurting. When I talked to him I said, “I love you and want you to be a part of our family, because I think you are really a good person deep down—and, by the way, my daughter is in love with you. So what can we do to make you the best Scott you can be?” We all reached out that way and made sure that he knew he was loved but that he had to get it together.

  You will remember that my mother was in a similar situation at one point with my stepdad, Harry, whom I adored. My mom had to tell Harry that she wasn’t willing to be around him anymore until he cleaned up his act with alcohol. Suddenly, two generations later, Kourtney was facing the same dilemma. She loved Scott and wanted to give him another chance. She wanted to do everything she could to make the relationship work, and she wasn’t willing to walk away from him yet. I really admired her for that. Scott got it together; I haven’t seen him with a drink in over a year now.

  Later that same year, we all went to Mexico on a vacation for Kourtney’s birthday, which was an annual tradition. All of Kourtney’s girlfriends were there with us. I remember looking at her while she was running around in her bikini and thinking, If I didn’t know my daughter better, I would say she’s pregnant. It wasn’t that she was even showing, it was that I just sensed it. I just knew instinctively. A few weeks later, she came into work at Smooch.

  “Oh my God, Mom, I have something to tell you. I’m pregnant!” she said.

  I was so, so happy for her! I knew that she was going to make an amazing mom, and I was so excited, because of course this was going to be our first grandchild.

  I never imagined that Kourtney would be the first of my daughters to have a baby, because she was really the least enthusiastic about small children. We had a children’s store, and when people would come in with little kids, she got annoyed. She would say, “Ugh, they’re bringing their baby in our store.” I would say, “Well, we do have a kids’ store. It’s not really weird that somebody’s bringing her kid in here.” So seeing her so ecstatic about becoming a mother was great. She started reading every book she could get her hands on. I knew that Kourtney was going to be a great mom.