New York has always had “It” girls, from Brenda Frazier and Cornelia Guest to Baby Jane Holzer and Edie Sedgwick. Now it has mini-”It” girls. At sixteen and eighteen, Nicky and Paris Hilton are the littlest socialites in town. Thin, blond, and wellborn—their great-grandfather was Conrad Hilton—they moved from L.A., with their parents three years ago, and are now out and about with the city’s most entitled teens. Like Eloise, whose story the two say they read “like, a hundred years ago,” they live in a hotel (the Waldorf, in their case, where Paris, left, and her sister were photographed), and they often find themselves scrutinizing a grownup picture-book world. Sometimes it can be absolutely underwhelming.
“We don’t like this party,” Paris was saying at a store opening for the English designer Nicole Farhi one evening recently. “It’s boring, and we’re seeing our mother’s friends.” Nicky nodded glumly, adding, “Never a good sign.” Charging up a flight of stairs in their platform heels, they scooted past Arnold Scaasi, the designer, who is an acquaintance of the family’s. “Girls, come give me a kiss and talk to me,” he said.
“We can’t, Scaasi,” Nicky said. “We have to go to the next party, downtown.” They left him gaping.
Without even a smile, they can breeze past the velvet ropes at Moomba or get a seat at Le Bilboquet. And, along with a taste for charity benefits and the couture shows in Paris (“So much more creative than the shows in New York,” they agree), they’ve developed an appetite for something else their elders enjoy: seeing their names in print. Carrying twin candy-colored cell phones instead of tennis racquets, they’re the Venus and Serena Williams of competitive socializing—made for the paparazzi and each other, too.
“We get along because we’re so much alike,” Paris says.
“We used to fight over petty things, like toys,” Nicky adds. “But now we’re more mature.”