OPINION:
It's 8.30 in the morning and one of us has already been in hair and make-up for some time.
Kim Kardashian turns up for the Dolce & Gabbana press conference in the Milan HQ (she's curated their spring/summer show) on time and is wearing all the trademarks you'd expect.
The exaggerated contouring, crazily improbable Jessica Rabbit silhouette, fronds of eye-lash extensions, inflatable beige lips orbited with highlighter and butt implants have become ubiquitous in certain circles across the world.
"Most people seem to dread sitting in the glam chair [being made up] for two hours," she says later. "But it's my favourite time of the day. I love my team and seeing the new ideas for my looks they come up with. It's like a creative process for me."
The designers have arranged a leopard print throne between them for her to sit on.
"I was never a big fan of animal print, but the boys have brought the leopard out in me," she remarks, daintily gliding on to it – not easy in five inch stilettos, sheer black tights and a bustier, with Bardot-blonde, piled-up hair and a satin cape which keeps slipping off her shoulders.
I've seen Kim at fashion shows before, but never this close. She is m-i-n-i-s-c-u-l-e. The 21lbs she lost to fit into Marilyn's Happy Birthday, Mr President dress for the Met Ball earlier this year, 16 of them in three weeks, seem to have stayed off. And she wasn't big before, although the butt and boobs make her seem Diana Dors-like in pictures.
This conference is some kind of rubicon. For years she was shunned by the higher echelons of fashion who, despite their convenient bouts of amnesia when it comes to thorny issues like racism, misogyny and phone throwing, have always deemed reality TV – together with the "wrong" kind of make-up and sex tapes – some kind of moral red line. Perhaps the Kardashians just seemed so needy.
Banned from even attending the Met Ball, she found fashion's citadel crumbling once she married Kanye West in 2014.
One of the most successful recording artists of the early 21st century and a man not without his own fashion pretensions (he chose Paris as the venue to launch his very first, and last, catwalk collection), Kanye was her ticket to the top table.
His Svengali incursions on her taste, introductions to "cool" designers and her willingness to subjugate her body to whatever extreme beauty paradigms were required to get a fashion magazine cover, fascinated and repelled in equal measure.
Like it or not, her attention-demanding turns at the Met Ball, where she is now one of the most anticipated guests, invariably go viral. She's box office. Even those who are repelled by the Kardashian aesthetic and brash self creation (the ultimate expression of the American dream), are unwittingly reacting to her. Kardashians have become a major push-me-pull-you force in our culture.
It's hard to dissect exactly what she's had done and where the make up ends and the tawny, preternaturally smooth skin starts. Whether or not you approve of the result – and its impact on how chunks of society now aspire to look – Kim's body and face are a work of art.
She's punctiliously polite. It's "Oh my Gosh", not "Oh my God". She bought Jackie Kennedy's Cartier watch at auction a few years ago, and sits ram-rod straight. If I had to guess her aspiration, it's Disney Princess meets Michelle Obama. She speaks Valley Girl, but with intelligence and a degree of humility (it's relative; she's flanked by two man mountain bodyguards).
When someone asks the inevitable question about the "immense influence" she's wielded over the past decade-and-a-half, she says she hopes she's remembered for championing body diversity – a statement some would see as hollow given that she's currently less than a size zero, although arguably that's a manifestation of diversity too.
When another question (they've all been carefully audited) crops up about her future ambitions, she says it's to finish school (she's studying to be a lawyer, like her father) and raise her children to be happy.
At first it was only D-lister celebs and wannabes who wanted to look like her. But now it's far more pervasive – witness the amount of make-up and high heels worn at Queen Elizabeth's funeral or the general lack of ambiguity/subtlety in fashion. She's unarguably raised the bar for grooming to Olympic levels.
On front rows at refined luxury labels that once shuddered at any Kardashian association, many influencers – who are dressed and provided with hair and make-up artists by the brands whose shows they attend – look like Kimfluencers.
There's no doubt she took the Dolce curation project, which came about after years of asking the designers to open up their archives for her, seriously.
"Some of my earliest memories of my mum are her going on date nights with my dad in her Dolce. It made her look so smart and strong," she says.
The designers were such heroes in the Kardashian household, they named their black lab Gabbana and their chihuahua Domenico. Given the designers' relative heights, that too displays a degree of research.
Kim's first job was working in a boutique that sold D&G, their now defunct second line, and she spent all her paycheques on their clothes, eventually requiring a bail out from her stepfather.
A London-based friend of mine with an enviable designer wardrobe used to pay Kim commission to sell her cast offs on eBay. "Kim was super efficient," recalls my friend.
She's been collecting rare vintage Dolce pieces for years.
"I feel like everyone has multiple personalities. I definitely have my futuristic alien Barbie personality. But in my soul – how do I say it – I feel like a sensual Italian mob wife when I wear Dolce. I don't know whether that's offensive or appropriate [cue pained smiles from the designers]. But when you come to Italy, you're just a boss. Everyone is so respectful."
To her maybe. Later that afternoon, at the Dolce show, appreciation from the audience is at the wild end.
For this show her job was to look through 20 years of Dolce's archives, from 1997 to 2007, and together with the designers, select key pieces that could then be remade and restyled or left in their original state.
"When they couldn't agree, I was the tie-breaker," she says.
Beneath the gauzy outer membrane she must have a rhino skin – everyone talks of her persistence. And on Sunday it paid off again.
Mock the idea of curating a show if you like, but she honed in on the three pillars that have made Dolce & Gabbana so successful after so many years. The impeccable tailoring, the pretty floral and lace dresses and the crystal-smothered gowns that will still look good in another 30 years. Kim probably will too.
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