Paris: The Memoir(82)

First and foremost is the music. In between mainstage acts—Megan Thee Stallion, Harry Styles, Billie Eilish, Swedish House Mafia with The Weeknd, Doja Cat—there’s a constant rotation of amazing performers on eight stages. I have to map out a schedule and literally run from one stage to another in my platform boots, making sure I have time for all my favorite DJ sets and—my favorite thing—the Neon Carnival.

The Neon Carnival is the last echo of the LA party vibe we loved at the turn of the century.

“New York had Studio 54,” Brent said to me not long ago, “but we had the nineties and 2000s. You could go to a club in LA on a Monday night, and it felt like an Emmy party.”

I’m not the only one who still wants to party like it’s 1999.

The Neon Carnival is a curated experience that makes me think of those wildly fun, colorful turn-of-the-century parties. In the beginning, it was staged inside a giant airplane hangar, but after ten years, they moved it to the HITS (Horse Shows in the Sun) Equestrian Center. The guest list is limited. There are no tickets or tables for sale. It doesn’t matter if you have money or a massive Instagram following.

There are celebrities like me and venture capitalists like Carter, but fame and money aren’t the be-all-end-all. You’re just as likely to bump into a skater poet from Venice, a race-car driver from Australia, models from Japan, advertising moguls from Kenya, people from different cultures, people with different abilities, loud people, quiet people, straight people, gay people, drag queens, drama queens, introverted extroverts and extroverted introverts. The only thing we all have in common is that we’re alive and lit up with milky neon magic.

For Neon Carnival, avant-garde fashion is the rule, not the exception, so the clothes, hair, and makeup are out of control, but not as expensive and hard to move around in as the avant-garde looks you see at the VMAs and the Met Gala. I love seeing everyone breaking away from the expected, expressing their personal freakiness, whatever that is. I think I’ll wear a little black dress with neon green beads that come alive in black light, plus sunglasses from my new Quay collab, a fleecy neon rainbow bomber jacket from Dolls Kill, and a little hologram backpack for my phones, ketchup packets (Heinz and fries, always), extra tiaras (designed by Melissa Loschy of Loschy Crowns, who makes these glorious bespoke headpieces and sells them on Etsy) so I can gift them as the spirit moves me, a couple of fragrances (sometimes I wear a men’s scent), a makeup kit, and a little battery-operated fan. Because it’s hot. Temperature-wise.

In the wake of the 2008 economic collapse came the Web 2.0 democratization of the internet. We started talking about the “long tail” concept of creator content that breathed outside the box. No more product-launch windows. No more gatekeepers. Now you could create and direct your own marketing from the palm of your hand. I was on the bleeding edge of it all, with all the name recognition—for better or worse—powering my platform, which got me some great opportunities in movies, television, and traditional media.

Some people were saying the old world and the new were separate and incompatible, but for me, it was a healthy symbiotic mix. There was no established path for me to follow, no role models for me to learn from. I just spread my wings and the updraft took me.

During the 2008 presidential election, the McCain campaign inexplicably chose to use images of me in their ads as the example of the worst thing they could think of: a “Hollywood celebrity.” I guess their intention was to equate Barack Obama with me and Brit—vacuous celebs with nothing to contribute to the dialogue. A relatively new website called Funny or Die came to me with a brilliant idea, and I did a series of “Paris for President” faux campaign ads, which include some of my favorite dialogue ever.

ME (sitting on a chaise in a cute swimsuit): Okay, so here’s my energy policy: Barack wants to focus on new technology to cut foreign oil dependence. McCain wants offshore drilling. Why don’t we do a hybrid of both candidates’ ideas? We can do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars. That way the offshore drilling carries over until the new technologies kick in, which will create new jobs and energy independence. Energy crisis solved! I’ll see you at the debates, bitches.

I studied the scripts so there wouldn’t be a teleprompter and it would be clear that I knew what I was talking about. No baby voice. Just me. The crew came to the Hamptons to film, so I got to hang out with my family at the same time.

“You’ll be back for Thanksgiving, won’t you?” Mom said.

I probably made some vague promise that I would, and I didn’t purposely avoid those holiday weekends. I didn’t make a point of not going, but I didn’t make a point of going, either. I was in a good place with my parents.

In 2010, Instagram and Pinterest launched. The big movies were Inception and The Social Network. The party vibe was noticeably shifting now with the knowledge that whatever you did, wherever you went, someone there had a camera, and anything you said or did could be out there for the world to see within seconds. Casey Johnson died just a few days into the new year. She’d been best friends with Nicky and me since we were little girls, and she looked so happy in the last photos I saw on Instagram. Rocking a sparkling gold mini with snakeskin pumps and a Chanel bag. I clicked that little heart. It was beyond imagination—the idea that Nicky and I would never see her again.