Inside Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian’s big fashion face-off

Celebrity News

By Sara Nathan

August 26, 2023 | 10:00am

It’s a fashion face-off between the most famous sisters in the world.

Kylie Jenner will go up against Kim and Khloé Kardashian and launch a new fashion range, sources confirm to Page Six.

The 26-year-old billionaire has signed on with Jens and Emma Grede, the husband-and-wife fashion team behind Kim’s hugely successful Skims and Khloé’s Good American denim range.

“All the girls each have their own vision,” one source told us. “They inspire and whip each other up. They’re all so different and independent, but they give each other a ton of advice.”

At the end of 2019, Jenner sold 51% of her cosmetics and skin care brand, Kylie Cosmetics, to Coty for $600 million, a price tag that valued the company at $1.2 billion.

Meanwhile, Kim’s Skims, the shapewear and lingerie brand, was valued at a staggering $4 billion last month — and she’s also in talks with Coty to buy back the minority stake she sold in her beauty firm, SKKN.

Jenner was barely in her teens when she and her older sister, model Kendall Jenner, released their own line, Kendall + Kylie back in 2012, in collaboration with the retailer PacSun.

We’re told that the license deal ended earlier this year.

“Kylie has always been in fashion, and she’s stepping up her game,” said a fashion insider: “She’s always had a very clear vision.”

Indeed, Jenner — who recently modeled for famed French couturier Jean Paul Gaultier’s summer campaign — is taking on Kim as the style icon in the family.  

She is also the new face of Dolce & Gabbana eyewear and handbags, and, Page Six is told, she has another fashion campaign coming this fall.

She stunned at Paris Fashion Week last September, channeling her inner Julia Fox and wearing a pair of white briefs and a tank to the Loewe Show.

Next, she turned up in a super-plunging Schiaparelli gown to the couture house’s presentation.

She then showed off in a sexy sheer lace catsuit at the Business of Fashion gala.

In January, the star — whose fortune has allowed her to splash out on a private jet, lavish homes including a $36million California mansion, Birkin bags, and sports cars — hit the headlines when she donned an eerily lifelike lion headdress at the Schiaparelli show, again in Paris.

“She’s gotten a ton of validation around what she’s wearing and who she’s partnering with,” said the source.

Meanwhile, Kim has been honest about how her style was affected by her very public divorce from Kanye West, saying last year: “I definitely see what I like, but I’ve never really been the visionary.

“Kanye would come in and be like, ‘You should do your hair like this. You should do your makeup like this.’ That’s his love language, it’s clothes,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out, who am I in the fashion world, or who am I by myself?”

Bethan Holt, fashion news and features director at the UK Telegraph told us that although the Kardashian-Jenner klan still remains “divisive” in the fashion industry, their impact “can’t really be overstated”.

“I think certain labels take them very seriously and recognize their power like Marc Jacobs choosing Kim for his latest ad campaign — even if it feels like there’s a slightly ironic tone to that,” she said.

“It feels only natural that Kylie would choose to further monetize her status with her own fashion brand after it worked so well with her beauty line.”

Holt said that it can pay to have your own label instead of boosting another brand’s reputation, adding that the success of Skims shows that the shapewear’s reach has now gone “far beyond the Kim superfans.”

“They’re really filling a gap in the market,” she said, adding that when it comes to Kylie’s new venture, “Anything which challenges the wasteful and polluting Shein business model can only be a good thing.”

Jenner, who has two young children — 5-year-old daughter Stormi and one-year-old son Aire — with ex-boyfriend Travis Scott, has gone through an image overhaul.

She’s currently linked with actor Timothée Chalamet and, this past July, admitted to having a boob job before she had Stormi that she regretted.

“I had beautiful breasts, like natural t–s. Just gorgeous. Perfect size, perfect everything,” she said. “I just wish obviously I never got them done, to begin with.”

She also spoke out this year about suffering from postpartum depression that she thought “would never pass” with both her children.

Her candidness has come as a welcome surprise and should be good for business, said an insider. “I don’t think anyone expected her to be that open about it, but it’s so important that she did.”

The news that Jenner is now partnering with the Gredes was first reported by Puck’s influential fashion writer Lauren Sherman.

And, despite rumors that it will be “fast fashion”, industry insiders were keen to say it won’t be cheap — and absolutely nothing like China-based e-commerce giant Shein.

Instead, Jenner may turn to a range that skews to “quiet lux”, the new byword in fashion chic.

“They need to distance their brands from unsustainable and unethical practices, [and not] produce clothes in such volume that if they don’t sell them all they get stuck in landfills.” said one well-placed fashion expert.

“Quite rightly, they don’t want to be tarred with that fast fashion brush, no one does — except Love Island contestants, who will take whatever deal they can get!”

Skims and Good American’s relatively high prices reflect some commitment to quality and sustainability.

The former’s bras are around $50, while the latter’s jeans mostly hover between $100 and $200.

The Gredes have impeccable fashion credentials.

Swedish Jens co-founded Frame Denim with Erik Torstensson.

He met Londoner Emma when she worked at his former marketing firm, Saturday Group.

Emma kept bumping into the Kardashian clan at fashion week and instead of being snobby about them — like many other fashion insiders — saw their huge potential.

She pitched Good American first to momager Kris Jenner before taking the idea to Khloé.

The two co-founded the size-inclusive Good American in 2016.

Last year, it was slated to bring in $200 million.

Sherman reported that Gredes’ team at their company, Popular Culture, has begun interviewing candidates for certain positions without telling them anything about the project. 

The duo — who have made such a fortune they now own former retail mogul Max Azaria’s Bel Air estate — have their hands full as they are currently running Skims on a day-to-day basis.

The plan is to open multiple Skims stores next year — it’s currently online only, although there was a summer pop-up at Rockefeller Center in NYC.

The Gredes are also both co-founders of Safely, the cleaning products line that Emma fronts alongside Kris Jenner, which made $10 million last year, and recently launched at Target alongside grocery chain Kroger.

“You can’t just do a celebrity brand — I find that completely uninteresting,” Emma told Business of Fashion last year. “For me it’s about, first and foremost, trying to solve a problem.”

Yet, for all of the clan’s lucrative entrepreneurial ventures, a family insider insisted, “The girls are not competitive. They’re so supportive of each other.”

And, Jenner, ever the momager, has a more is more philosophy when it comes to business dealings.

“Working with my kids on their brands is such a blessing,” she said.