On Khloé: Verushka swimsuit, Eres ($445). Swim, Encore Las Vegas; eresparis.com. White-gold and diamond necklace, Bulgari (price on request). The Forum Shops at Caesars; bulgari.com. On Kim: Bathing suit, Vix (price on request). vixswimwear.com. Diamond and platinum long chains, Neil Lane ($120,000 each). neillanejewelry.com. On Kourtney: Bathing suit, Vix (price on request). Platinum earrings, Bulgari (price on request).
It’s early March, and every tabloid on the newsstand features the Kardashians. Big, bold headlines shout “Toxic Love!” and “Humiliated by Their Men,” citing “close, personal friends” and “inside sources” for scandalous nuggets on the personal lives of Kourtney, 31, Kim, 29, and Khloé Kardashian, 25—three California women who became pop-culture phenoms through their E! reality series Keeping Up with the Kardashians and the subsequent spin-off, Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami, which kicks off its second season this June.
“[The tabloids] have been on Kourtney and Scott’s case for a while,” says Kim of her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, Scott Disick. “What’s so crazy is they started those stories when we aired an episode of us in Vegas where Kourtney and her boyfriend were about to break up. People don’t remember that was, like, seven months ago, that’s not current. I think obviously when you read stuff, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, but at the end of the day, a lot of it’s made up. People want to feel like they have that ‘in.’ If it was true, why wouldn’t they just come out and name the source?”
“Normally the ‘friend’ is just some waiter at some restaurant,” echoes Khloé. “All these things on the covers of these magazines, they’re so false. But you do get frustrated and you want to defend yourself and tell people the real story. But people are going to believe what they want to believe.” Thankfully the sisters have the ultimate platform for a personal exposé—their two reality series, which follow the women from their Calabasas, California, family home base to their Miami clothing boutique as well as to every business meeting, Vegas vacation and birthday dinner in between. “There’s times where we definitely might feel uncomfortable about something, but then we turn it around and are able to tell our story our way,” says Kim. “You just choose your battles.”
One month later, all the Kardashians are in South Florida filming the second season of Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami. Camera crews record every moment of the women’s lives over a three-month period, usually seven days a week, 18 hours a day. Meetings are pre-arranged and filming permits are secured, but for the most part, whatever happens, happens. And that means both the good and the bad of life in the limelight are put right there on prime time for the entire world to see.
“I try to never regret anything [that appears on the show],” says Khloé, the most gregarious of the Kardashian clan. “My DUI obviously was something that is embarrassing—you feel stupid and it’s something you shouldn’t have done. But then I appreciate that I have a platform to teach people no one is exempt from this rule.”
“I didn’t want to film it—[what appeared on the season-four finale of Keeping Up with the Kardashians] was a home video that [half-sister] Kylie [Jenner] and Scott filmed,” says Kourtney of the birth of her son, Mason Dash Disick, this past December. “I was hesitant about [airing] my birth because it was such a private moment—especially the part when I pulled him out. But then, after seeing the reaction… so many people that were really scared to give birth thought it was very empowering to women. I didn’t expect that.”
