Nicky Hilton Wants Girls to Stop Dressing Like Celebrities

Photos by Amy Lombard

“We live in a society where everybody is so celebrity obsessed and everyone’s trying to dress like their favorite star. [We] just see a bunch of clones walking down the street.”

These are the last words you expect to hear from a celebrity, let alone Nicky Hilton—sister of Paris, great-granddaughter of Conrad, and niece of Kim and Kyle Richards from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills—but a few weeks ago, Hilton told me this at Siggy's, a juice place on the Lower East Side.

“When it comes to fashion, fashion is a form of expression,” Hilton said. “If you’re dressing exactly like Taylor Swift, it’s kind of silly.”

This fall Hilton is on a mission to change the way we think about celebrities and fashion. On September 2, Harlequin releases Style 365, a book Hilton says she spent the last two years writing. Like a vision quest, the “style guide” teaches girls and women to find themselves.

“[The book] really encourages women to dig deep and find their own sense of style—their signature thing that sets them apart from everyone else,” Hilton said.

Hilton describes her own personal style as a “hybrid” between California beach style and New York’s downtown look. Although Hilton was born in New York, she spent her childhood bouncing back and forth between coasts, even living at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

“It just felt normal,” Hilton said. “We would sometimes come out of the elevator and the president would be standing there, so that wasn’t very normal, but living in a hotel [seemed] normal.”

Hilton has chosen New York over California as her adult home for its museums, food, and culture—the same reasons she loves the Donna Tartt novel The Goldfinch, one of her current favorite books alongside Arianna Huffington’s Thrive and Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso's #GIRLBOSS.

“I loved that [The Goldfinch] was set in New York and they were describing different corners and streets and I could totally envision all of it,” Hilton said. “I am a die hard New Yorker,” she added, but Paris “likes LA. She’s like a dude where she loves cars—and you can’t have a bunch of fancy sports cars here in New York.”

Lately, Hilton’s been living downtown. Wearing a black and white dress and carrying a matching Chanel purse, she described herself as an “accessories addict.” To show me her personal style, she invited me to accompany her to one of her favorite downtown stores—Patricia Fields, the boutique known for its flashy, alternative clothing—which she described as an “institution” for her and her sister Paris.

“We took our allowance money, and we put it all together, and we would share a taxi down to [Patricia Fields on] 8th Street and just go nuts.”

“How much was your allowance?” I asked.

“Twenty dollars.”

“That’s so little.”

“I know it is, but it took us quite far.”

Hilton hated some of the clothes at Patricia Fields. Holding overalls, she explained why she hates overalls: “I just don’t think there is anything feminine or elegant about them.”

“So do you prefer elegant clothes?” I asked.

“I do prefer to look lady-like—like a girl and wear a lot of dresses."

“Who do you think wears overalls? What type of girl?”

“Hipsters.”

“Do you not like hipsters?”

“No, I’m totally down with a hipster.”

“No. It’s fine. We’re not setting you up.”

“You guys are hipsters!”

Even when Hilton dislikes a style, she never makes a snide joke or insults the person rocking the clothes. After she told me she hates when guys wear accessories, she impulsively put her hand up and checked to see if I was wearing any bracelets. She noticed I wasn’t and then breathed a sigh of relief.

Hilton avoids insulting people, even humorously, and loads her sentences with respect and subtly, two values that most Americans would say Honey Boo-Boo and the Kardashians murdered several years ago.

“I like feminine girls,” Hilton said. “I like girls in a nice dress at an appropriate length—dressing your age is important, too.”

In many ways, Hilton is a throwback to the lovable, wealthy protagonists of Edith Wharton’s novels from the early 20th Century. Although Hilton possesses grace, she also has a unique style like Wharton's eccentric protagonists. As we walked through Patricia Fields, Hilton stopped at a large bowl full of socks. “I love socks,” Hilton said as she sorted through a bowl of socks, tossing a weed sock away to reach for one emblazoned with an American flag. “Tokyo has the best ones—they just have these fun prints. Topshop has cute socks too.”

Hilton had a sense of humor and agreed to take photos in this ugly hat, but she also set her limits. At one point Amy, the photographer, pulled a T-shirt that said “Thug Wife” off a rack and held it up to Hilton.

“Would you like to wear something crazy like this?” Amy asked.

Silence. “No.”

At one point, reality TV came up in conversation, and Hilton mentioned how it can be difficult for her to watch.

“You watch the Housewives?” she asked.

My heart started beating fast. I knew Hilton’s aunts, Kim and Kyle, had shown dark moments of their personal lives on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

“I don’t watch all of them, just particular ones,” I said, trying to skirt the conversation, worried Hilton was subtly testing me. “It can be kind of hard to watch though because it’s kind of a dark [franchise].”

“Right? I loved watching The Real Housewives of New York because it was a guilty pleasure and I laughed for an hour,” Hilton said, never bringing up her aunts. “Then it got dark all of sudden. When you start going after people’s spouses and children, that’s just below the belt for me.”

Hilton says she's grown disgusted with how brands pay bloggers to tweet about their products: “I followed the fashion blogs for years, and sometimes you see them on your feed: 'I just woke up in my Bed, Bath, and Beyond sheets, and in my Guest pajamas, and now I’m going to go to @BurgerKing for a coffee,'” she said. “They’re all getting paid to plug things that they don’t even like or know what they are. You don’t even know what’s true with all of these blogs—if they actually like it or if they’re getting paid to like it.”

Hilton knows her family basically invented the reality TV star and the age of personal branding in the early 2000s, but she maintains that this was never her intention when she agreed to appear in Vanity Fair with Paris in 2000. “The Vanity Fair shoot started because Paris had a friend who is a genius,” she said. “[He] basically said, ‘We’re going to fly you out first class to California and do a photo shoot and you get to wear all of these cool, expensive, designer clothes. Do you want to do it?’ And I was like yes. So we agreed to do that.” Next thing she knew she was in a feature-length profile in the glossy magazine that included an interview at her family's home in Southampton.

“I love going to the Hampton's especially in the winter when it’s just desolate and a ghost town. I love the winter—much, much prefer it over the summer,” she said. “There’s no traffic. You can find a parking space in one second and it’s romantic and spooky. I love sitting by the fireplace and watching movies. That’s my idea of heaven.”

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