Kylie Jenner is All Grown Up: The Face of Generation Bombshell

Sep 8, 2015 @ 10:00 am By Mallory Llewellyn

Kylie Jenner by Terry Richardson

It’s easy to forget Kylie Jenner is the youngest person in her famous family, unless you’re sitting across the couch from her. “The reality is that I don’t even want to be 18. I wish I could be 17 for the rest of my life. I don’t want to get any older. I just want to be young and enjoy it, but this lifestyle absolutely made me grow up faster,” she says. And I believe her. “For me, age is just a number,” Kylie quips.

“It makes no sense that even a month ago people were complaining that I was too young to be doing certain things, and now people are just okay with it because I’m grown.”

Big sister, Khloe Kardashian, said something integral to understanding Kylie: “Kylie is taking business meetings and bought her first house, or she’s going on a private plane with Karl Lagerfeld to take a meeting. That’s not even what people do in their 30s. It’s a rare circumstance, so let’s treat this as a special case.” Kylie wasn’t legally an adult until a month ago, but that hasn’t stopped the media from placing every action and decision she’s made under its hypercritical lens. “It just makes no sense that, even a month ago, people were complaining that I was too young to be doing certain things, and now people are just okay with it because I’m grown. I don’t know why that one day made such a difference, but it really does change things for people,” Kylie says.

“Kim has definitely inspired the business side of me the most. It’s her work ethic.”

Like everyone else, Kylie is learning from the behavior she’s exposed to. “I’m always getting my makeup done or living an experience that I’m aware most 18-year-old girls don’t get to have, so I’m just picking up on things,” she explains. The Kardashians aren’t just a close family, but a successful business enterprise. It’s a lot more than makeup tips and boy advice from Jenner’s big sisters. “Kim has definitely inspired the business side of me the most,” Kylie explains. “It’s her work ethic. If she wants to do something, she goes out and does it. She’s really smart in that way.”

“Do you have Kim’s work ethic? Is that something that comes naturally to you?” I ask.

“Well, my mom has raised us all like that. I am definitely like that. I need to be doing some type of work all the time. If I’m not working for two weeks, I freak out. But I also love having down time with friends,” she tells me.

“I have a good taste in style. I know what people are going to like and I know what people are not going to like.”

In only two years, Kylie has taken over the fashion and beauty world of business. “I have a good taste in style. I know what people are going to like and I know what people are not going to like,” she says, and she’s not the only one who thinks that: according to Bloomberg Businessweek, 18-year-old Kylie Jenner is the most influential member of the Kardashian clan when it comes to young fans’ fashion choices. Between 34 million followers on Instagram, 11 million followers on Twitter, and being the number one most viewed person on Snapchat, it’s no surprise Kylie’s fashion influence is so strong.

Through her online presence and instinctive ability to know what people want, Kylie is using her power with TheKylieJenner.com—a website that gives fans a behind-the-scenes look into her world and features beauty tutorials on how to get her newly iconic look. “I’m having a lot of fun building videos for my website,” she says. “I’m spending some time thinking of really cool content ideas for it—everyday, it’ll be something new,” Kylie confirms. As if she’s not busy enough, building content set to release daily is a full-time job in itself. Kylie’s not worried though. “Before it launches, I’m trying to film as much as I can so that I can have a month where I don’t really have to do as much preparation for it.”

“Right before you’re about to release a project you’ve been working on, like your website, do you ever get nervous that people aren’t going to like it?” I ask.

“Well, for my new lip kit, I just put in my order for how many of them I want produced from my manufacturer. I was struggling with the number to ask them to make because I was like, Do I want to make this much? No, because nobody is going to buy it. I didn’t want to order that much. But then my mom was like, ‘Kylie, people are going to want your lip kit.’ I guess sometimes that’s all I need to not get nervous.”

But she has no reason to be nervous–according to Vogue, the most Googled beauty question is:

‘How do I get Kylie Jenner’s lips?’