Looks Like Reign

Kylie Jenner is the first one to tell you: You don’t become the hottest thing on social media without knowing exactly what to filter.

- Davy Rothbart

The patio restaurant at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood is bright with California sunlight. This is where I’m meeting my lunch date, and right from the start, the restaurant manager—a dapper fellow named Lance—mistakes me for an “advance man.” It’s not unreasonable to assume that I would be sent by Kylie Jenner’s team to scout out the most suitable table and make sure everything will be to her liking. But it would be incorrect. No, I tell him, I’m actually the magazine writer she’s meeting. “So sorry,” says Lance. “It’s just—it’s Kylie Jenner. I figured there’d be an advance man.”

I have no experience as an advance man, but I pick a table tucked away in the back, where she seems least likely to be noticed. And going unnoticed is not easy for the 18-year-old. Beyond starring on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, the reality-TV soap opera now in its twelfth season, Jenner is something of a social media savant: 63 million followers on Instagram, 16 million on Twitter, and a rabid following on Snapchat. Whether she’s featured on gossip sites that are reporting on her recent breakup with rapper Tyga, or on promoted posts about her wildly popular line of Lip Kits (if you’re not sure how wildly popular, consider that they sell out in minutes), or on her best-selling lifestyle app, Jenner’s face is just about everywhere. (A recent scandal erupted over those famous liquid lipsticks: Some boxes arrived empty after the goods were stolen from doorsteps. Now they come in nondescript packaging.)

Given her star wattage, it comes as something of a surprise when Jenner sidles up to my table all by herself, bereft of entourage, paparazzi, or adoring fans, her lone handler retreating to the shadows. She gives a pleasant hello and slides in next to me, saying, “You hungry? Let’s eat something!”