KYLIE JENNER: SELFIE-MADE MAKEUP MOGUL
Just a month ago, the editors of luckbox predicted no one would break Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s record of becoming the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at age 23 – at least not for a long time. It was one of the reasons we named Zuckerberg luckbox of the month for April.
Almost immediately after that the press began proclaiming
that Kylie Jenner had smashed Zuck’s record – beating him by roughly two years at age 21. But did she? Maybe luckbox – which is predicated on leveraging probability – wasn’t entirely wrong.
We’re not saying Jenner’s not worth 10 figures.That’s not for us to decide. We’re just saying she’s not self-made. After all, Jenner’s been unbelievably lucky – so lucky, in fact, that she’s earned the title of luckbox of the month for May.
Jenner claims otherwise when it comes to luck, saying she started her Kylie Cosmetics goldmine with money she made as a model, not with cash anybody handed her. That explanation satisfied Forbes magazine, which christened her the youngest self-made billionaire ever.
The princess of lip kits made the Forbes list of billionaires soon after she signed a deal to feature her $29 kits in Ulta’s more than 1,000 stores. Until then, Jenner had flogged her wares online and in mall pop-ups.
But some observers, including HuffPost writers Emily Peck, greeted the Forbes proclamation with skepticism. Like luckbox, Peck can’t swallow the idea that Jenner’s self made. “The value of her makeup company lies in the celebrity she accrued via her family,” Peck wrote.
Writer Carley Ledbetter took a similar stance on the Entertainment website. “She comes from money and connections,” Ledbetter maintained.
Jenner was showered with luck from the moment she was born, growing up surrounded by celebrities in one of the nation’s wealthiest ZIP codes. For parents, she had TV personality Kris Jenner and 1976 Summer Olympics decathlon winner Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlyn Jenner.
Her mother’s first husband, attorney Robert Kardashian, was himself an infamous luckbox. A half-sister, Kim Kardashian, palled around with heiress Paris Hilton and married rapper Kanye West.
As a member of the Jenner- Kardashian clan, Jenner became a reality TV star at age 10 on the E! series Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
So anyone breathing the air in Jenner’s childhood haunts was inhaling the very essence of success. Those vapors weren’t wasted on her, either. By the time Jenner was 14, she and her sister were hawing a clothing line called “Kendall & Kylie”.
Kylie Lip Kits debuted the next year, and the name was later changed to Kylie Cosmetics. The startup got a valuable boost from Seed Beauty, a company launched by Laura Thomas. About that time Jenner’s mobile app reached No. 1 on the iTunes App Store.
In both 2014 and 2015, Time magazine named the Jenner sisters to their list of the most influential teens in the world. In 2017, Jenner became the youngest person ever to make the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. By 2018, Jenner became one of the Top 10 most-followed people on Instagram with more than 122 million followers.
By 2017, Jenner starred on her own spin-off TV series, Life of Kylie. Last year, the New York Post celebrated her as the most influential celebrity in the fashion industry. Now, she’s on that Forbes billionaires list.
Can we attribute all this to intellectual acumen? Not likely. Jenner recently tweeted about chemtrails, the debunked 1990s conspiracy theory that jet engines are poisoning all life on earth.
So the luckbox editors feel justified in concluding that luck played an undeniable role in Jenner’s ascension to the billionaires club. That’s why she’s luckbox of the month.
