Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian (35 page)

It began one day when they said, “Mom, we want to open a store in Miami.”

“You do? That’s a great idea!” I replied.

Kourtney loves Miami. When she was younger, she and Kim
and Khloé would go to Miami to celebrate New Year’s Eve. If we were opening a store there, why not add a television component? The show would be about the girls moving to Miami for the summer, where they would design and stock the store, hire the employees—or “Dash Dolls,” as they called them—and get ready for the store’s launch, which Kim flew in to attend.

We took it to Ryan Seacrest and the E! execs, and they said, “Let’s do it.”

Kourtney & Khloé Take Miami
was born.

It ran two seasons. Kourtney revealed her pregnancy on the show, and the second season finale had 3.6 million viewers.

Spin-off show: Check!

K
im 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!

S
till, 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 never 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.