Kim Kardashian, she’s the man.
The 43-year-old mother-of-four has been named GQ magazine’s “Tycoon of the Year” as part of its 2023 Men of the Year covers, whose other honorees are actor Jacob Elordi and rapper Travis Scott, on newsstands Nov. 28.
The reason for the honor? Her Skims clothing company is starting a men’s line.
In the cover shot, Kardashian wears an oversized suit jacket, pinstripe white button-down shirt and tie as she licks off orange Cheetos dust from her thumb, not unlike something a law school student would eat between studying — which is something she told the mag she spends two or three hours doing daily.
Along with cramming for the California Bar Exam, Kardashian just launched Skims Men as a new offering in her successful $4 billion shapewear business, along with a partnership as the official underwear of the NBA.
Kardashian believes that just like women who can sometimes feel insecure about their bodies and use shapewear to smooth their figures, men have just as many insecurities, “whether they talk about them or not.”
Plus, she said she “wanted men to find out what all the hype is about.”
“Kim is the Michael Jordan of the influencer generation,” Skims co-founder Jens Grede told the magazine. “Many 19-year-olds who never watched Jordan play and don’t play basketball themselves wear Air Jordan sneakers every day. Maybe you don’t watch ‘The Kardashians’ every single week, but you’re a Skims customer.”
Beyond being an expansion of her brand, the reality star said her love of menswear runs deep, as she often played in her father Robert Kardashian’s closet, full of designer belts, suits and ties for wearing in the courtroom.
“He always wanted to look cool,” she said of her late dad, who died of cancer in 2003.
Along with being her inspiration to enter law school — Robert was a friend and lawyer to O.J. Simpson and even served as part of his defense team during Simpson’s 1995 murder trial — Kardashian said she learned how to cultivate her entrepreneurial spirit from her dad.
As a teen, she and her sisters worked at his side company, Movie Tunes, which provided music for movie theaters, despite living a tony life in Beverly Hills.
When she asked to start her own side hustle, a clothing resale business on eBay, Kim said Robert loaned her his credit card, but she had to pay him back with interest.
“I’d work at my job and give him my paycheck,” she said.
And Kardashian is already inspiring her children with the same entrepreneurial goals, too. North West, 10, already has started a lemonade stand business at the end of their street in their gated Hidden Hills community.
“I understand that it is not a normal life,” she said. “We’re never going to have a normal family life no matter what. As a parent, I want to protect them as much as I can.”