Mirrored disco balls, chandeliers you could swing from and a large neon Ernest Hemingway quote that reads, ‘I drink to make other people more interesting.’ I’m in ‘Club Paris’, the exclusive yet infamous party room that’s played host to hundreds of revellers over the past 15 years, at Paris Hilton’s multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills mansion, in a private gated community off Hollywood’s iconic Mulholland Drive.
I wish I could say I’m on the dance floor, tequila in hand. Instead, it’s 11.30am on a weekday morning and I’m waiting for the heiress (to the Hilton hotel chain) turned entrepreneur on a plush grey sofa, surrounded by black-and-white sequinned cushions of her face. Yes, Paris Hilton’s home furnishings are as extra as you might expect.
The 40-year-old former It girl shuffles into the room quietly 15 minutes later. In the early 2000s, she was as famous for partying as she was for carrying miniature dogs around in designer handbags and appearing on the hit US reality show The Simple Life. Over 13 million viewers tuned in to watch Paris and fellow socialite Nicole Richie leave behind their mobile phones, celebrity status and LA lifestyles to live with a family in Arkansas and fail to hold down manual, low-paying jobs like farming and working for a fast-food chain.
Yet today there is no grand entrance. She isn’t flanked by publicists or bodyguards. Neither is she top-to-toe in labels, monograms or Swarovski crystals (all of which she made popular back in the day). She’s wearing black sweatpants and a neon-striped Aviator Nation windbreaker jacket when she joins me on the sofa, and her once long, blonde Barbie-doll hair has been chopped into a chic bob.
But the biggest surprise is that ‘Club Paris’ is, in fact, no more. Her home, which she bought in 2008 (and was famously burgled by the Hollywood ‘Bling Ring’, about which Sofia Coppola made a film in 2013), recently underwent a two-year renovation. And what I’m seeing today are merely the remnants of the decadence and debauchery that once went on here.
‘I’m grown-up now, so now this room is a movie theatre,’ she says, reaching for a cashmere blanket to wrap herself up in. ‘I’m so over going to parties. I never thought I would say that. I used to live for the nightlife. Now I couldn’t care less. I love being at home watching Netflix and cooking with my love [her fiancé Carter Milliken Reum – more on him later] and our puppies [there are currently six, named Diamond Baby, Harajuku, Crypto, Ether, Slivington and Cutesie, and their breeds range from Pomeranian to Chihuahua]. It’s nice to be with someone where you don’t even want to go out because it’s more fun being at home together. I have lived 10 million lifetimes. I’m ready for the real simple life.’
Paris is so domesticated these days that she has a new TV show to prove it. Cooking With Paris, which launches on Netflix next month, follows her as she tries out new recipes in her kitchen – opulent (marble counters, gold taps) with a sprinkling of Paris (a pink food processor, coffee mugs branded with her catchphrase ‘Loves It’) – joined in each episode by a different celebrity friend. Before taking part in the show, the only thing she could cook was the lasagne recipe her mother, Kathy Hilton, taught her as a child. ‘She’s part Italian so she makes the best lasagne,’ Paris explains. ‘Growing up, I was always in the kitchen with her cutting things up like a little sous chef.’ I don’t think she’ll mind me saying she was approached by Netflix after she made the lasagne for her YouTube channel and got 5.1 million views, rather than as a result of her culinary talents.
The show is very Paris: boldly tongue-in-cheek with a ‘fun and playful’ vibe that will appeal to The Simple Life fans. Think Paris dressed in a hot-pink ballgown riffling through the fruit and veg section of a supermarket. ‘What do chives look like?’ she asks the grocer. ‘What do I do with them?’
In episode one, a friend joins Paris for breakfast in her kitchen, which ‘looks like if Barbie or a Disney Princess had a kitchen. It’s very fun and girly and cute,’ she says. They reminisce about their days of partying in Ibiza, while attempting to make French toast, frittata and blue marshmallows (inspired by Paris’s favourite American breakfast cereal – the marshmallow-laden Lucky Charms). The producer has to show Paris where her blender is.
Full article: telegraph.co.uk
