People told me it was stupid to go skydiving the morning after my twentyfirst-birthday party in Las Vegas, but back then, I didn't care, and now I know they were wrong. If you want to go skydiving the morning after a Level 9 rager, go for it. Your twenty-first birthday is prime real estate for stupid, and a lot of stupid things you do in your twenties lay the foundation for wisdom later on. As you wise up, you realize that all the stupid things you didn't do—those are the regrets. My twenties were like, damn, girl. Leave no stupid behind. Love the wrong men. Hate the wrong women. Wear the Von Dutch. I have no regrets. Okay, I have a few regrets. Skydiving is not one of them. When I decided to do it, I was thinking it would be a perfect cherry on top of a star-studded, multicity, balls-out birthday celebration that was lit AF— possibly the greatest twenty-first-birthday celebration since Marie Antoinette —and I can say this with authority because partying is an area of expertise for me, a marketable skill developed over a lifetime of dedicated practice. A Brief History of My Partying Legacy (Details to be developed at greater length later in this book.) The parties I went to when I was tiny were mostly family gatherings at Brooklawn, the home of my dad's parents, Barron and Marilyn Hilton, whom I called Papa and Nanu. You may have seen this house on my docuseries Paris in Love; it's the Georgian-style mansion where I got married in 2021. Designed by legendary architect Paul R. Williams—who also created homes for Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Barbara Stanwyck, and other Hollywood immortals—the house was built for Jay Paley, one of the founders of CBS, in1935. At that time, Papa was eight, living in a hotel with his big brother Nicky, baby brother Eric, and my great-grandfather, Conrad Hilton. My greatgrandmother had left them (according to family mythology) because she didn't like the hardworking hotel life and gave up on Conrad ever having real money. (Mentally inserting "Bye, Felicia" gif.) Conrad was later briefly married to the Hungarian socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was broke but beautiful and happy to go out dancing every night. Zsa Zsa had a sparkling personality and developed an early version of the business model we now call influencing, getting paid to wear clothes, appear at parties, and talk up beauty products so the brand names would appear in the Hollywood press. The marriage ended bitterly, and Conrad decided it was better to raise the boys himself. He brought them up with old-school Christian values, making them work as bellhops and teaching them that work and family are jealous gods who will always be at war, fighting for a man's time and complete devotion. Papa married Nanu after World War II, and they had eight kids. Dad is number six. When he was little, they moved into the Jay Paley house and renamed it Brooklawn. This all sounds like ancient history, but to understand my story, you need to know the Hilton of it all. People who knew Conrad Hilton tell me I'm just like him, and I take that mostly as a compliment. Mostly. He died two years before I was born, and despite what most people think, he left most of his fortune to charity. Papa worked. My parents worked. I'm a working beast. In 2022, I signed a massive deal to be the face of Hilton Hotels in ad campaigns and cross-promotions on my social media, and I love working with them, but I think that's the biggest money I'll ever get for being a Hilton. But I am a Hilton, and that's huge. Here's me, acknowledging how blessed and lucky I am, okay? My family has been called "American royalty." I'm not downplaying the extraordinary privilege or the access it gave me. Experiences. Travel. Opportunities. I'm grateful for all of it. The Barron Hilton family is huge, and we flock together, loving each other and minding each other's business, even though we don't see each other as much since Nanu died. When we were little, Nicky and I adventured around Brooklawn with our million cousins, climbing fences and playing kickball on the lush green lawn. Parties at Brooklawn were like full-on carnival events, with pony rides, petting zoos, bouncy castles, tennis tournaments, and Marco Polo death matches in the gigantic pool, which featured an elaborate mosaic—imported Italian tile depicting the signs of the zodiac. I'm an Aquarius, so I thought I should be the one that looked kind of like a mermaid, but that turned out to be Virgo. Aquarius was a beefy-looking dude with a jug of water on his shoulder. I probably cried when I found that out. Actually, I probably cried for three seconds and then decided I was the mermaid, no matter what the stars or some old Italian tile people said. My parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, spent the 1970s partying with Andy Warhol and the hippest possible crowds from Studio City to Studio 54. My dad is in real estate and finance, the cofounder of Hilton & Hyland, a massive firm specializing in high-level corporate and residential real estate. My parents did a lot of entertaining related to his business, and when Mom has a party, she plans it down to the last rose petal, all the little things that make her guests feel like they're part of something special. Everything is perfect, including the hostess. My mom styles herself and her surroundings with impeccable taste. She walks into a party and works that room like a royal— savvy, kind, and beautiful. People love her, because she genuinely cares about people, listens to them, and lets them feel savvy, kind, and beautiful, too. True sophistication is the ability to fit in anywhere because you have a broad understanding of and respect for all kinds of people. Mom is sophisticated like that. She's funny and smart and stylish, but savvy is her real superpower. I had no clue how much silly energy she had bottled up inside her until she signed on to do The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in 2021. It was like somebody popped a cork on a bottle of pink champagne. When Nicky and I were little, before the boys came along, Mom schooled us on party manners. Which fork to use. How to place our feet when we stood for red carpet photos. We understood that our family name carried weight and drew attention. We had a certain place in society, which came with certain expectations. As little girls, Nicky and I attended super chic social functions, fundraising events, holiday galas, and fancy receptions at the Waldorf or the Met, where my parents mixed with lawyers, agents, politicos, and all kinds of extraordinary people who did big things. One of my earliest memories is sitting on Andy Warhol's lap, drawing pictures at an after-party at the Waldorf-Astoria. He loved me and always told my mom, "This kid is going to be a huge star." I love that my parents included us in all that. You might think fancy business and social events would be boring for a little kid, but I lived forthose parties. I learned to appreciate the architecture of a good ball gown. I was exposed to great music: jazz combos, string quartets, and private performances by famous artists. I sat like a butterfly on a fence, eavesdropping on adult conversations about corporate maneuvers, real estate deals, fortunes being made and lost, ill-advised love affairs, and messy divorces. It was all about love and money, two things that fascinated me because everyone seemed to be under the spell of one or the other. The first time I experienced going to a club environment, I was twelve. Nicky and I were friends with Pia Zadora's daughter Kady, and Pia was friends with our mom, so we got to go with Pia to a New Kids on the Block concert in LA. Because Pia was a celebrity, we got to go backstage—and we were, like, dying. "We're going to Bar One for the after-party," the boys told Pia. "You should come." Nicky and Kady and I were like, "We have to go! Please! Pleeeeeeeease!" We were all totally obsessed with New Kids. Pia was cool, so we went over to Bar One, and the bouncers let her right in because celebrity. The atmosphere inside Bar One blew my tiny mind. I had an immediate visceral response like yaaassssss because—LIGHTS MUSIC LAUGHTER FASHION MUSIC JOY LIGHTS WHITE TEETH DIAMONDS MUSIC—a blast of the flashy sensory input my ADHD brain constantly craved. I didn't know I was feeling an actual shift in my body chemistry, but I knew I was feeling something real, and I loved it. Every part of me came alive—body, brain, skin, spirit—and it felt awesome. Unfortunately, just as I was soaking all this in, we bumped into my mom's sister. Aunt Kyle was like, "WTF!" She dragged Pia aside for a brief, hissy conversation and then took us home, but I knew I had to go back. In my early teens, I took advantage of every sneak-out opportunity I could create. I became one of those Desperately Seeking Susan club kids who ruled the nighttime world in the early nineties. The vogue dancers, drag queens, and Harajuku girls took me under their wings and watched out for me, which is how I learned the key elements of partying like a rock star: 1. Stay hydrated. 2. Stay pretty (tipsy can be cute, but drunk is gross). 3. Wear boots—like good, sturdy platform boots—and comfortable clothes so you can dance all night and easily climb in and/or out ofwindows and over fences as needed. I didn't drink or do drugs back then. When I was a kid, fun was the only party drug I needed. I wasn't there to get wasted; I was there to dance. Alcohol and drugs are for escaping reality, and I wanted all the reality I could get. The escape drinking didn't happen until later. One night after the Pia Zadora club adventure, I tried to smuggle Nicky, our cousin Farah, and our friend Khloé Kardashian into Bar One. Khloé and Farah were little middle school girls, so I did Khloé up with full makeup, a long red wig, and a floppy black hat. I told her, "If anyone asks, your name is Betsey Johnson." I put Farah on top of somebody's shoulders with a big trench coat. We put so much effort into our disguises, we were shocked when we didn't get past the velvet rope. "I guess you need to be with someone famous," I said. I didn't like how it felt to be rejected in front of everyone. I wasn't going to let it happen again. When I was sixteen, I hooked up fake IDs for Nicky and me. We weren't fooling anyone, but we were getting a little bit famous, so we had no trouble getting in Bar One (now Bootsy Bellows), Roxbury (now Pink Taco), and other hot spots. My partying opportunities between the ages of sixteen and eighteen were limited, because I was locked up in a series of culty wilderness boot camps and "emotional-growth boarding schools." When I escaped for a few blessed weeks of freedom, I played it safe with small beach parties and living room gatherings where kids were just chilling and talking, until I made everyone get up and dance. Especially kids who were too shy or felt self-conscious about their bodies. They're the ones who need dancing most. This is still the rule at every gig I DJ in my virtual world or in real life: When you party with Paris, you dance. At eighteen, I signed with a modeling agency, and what do you think people want to do after a runway show? Party with models. It's easy to think no duh, but move past the easy assumption that men are pigs and models are dumb. That's not fair or true or useful. Most men are basically decent, I think, and successful models travel all over the world. Traveling the world is the best education there is. Most models are in their teens and twenties, and sometimes that lack of maturity shows, but they're growing. Give them a minute.Networking—knowing how to work a party—is a critical aspect of growing a business. In my twenties, I was so good at both partying and business, people started paying me to come to their parties. I didn't invent getting paid to party, but I reinvented it. I'm proud to be called the OG influencer. Girls need to understand the value they bring to the party. It's a lot more than standing around looking pretty. Mannequins can do that. An accomplished party girl is a facilitator, a negotiator, a diplomat—she's the sparkler and the match. Know your worth, girls. You're not lucky to be at the party; the party is lucky to have you. Apply as needed to relationships, jobs, and family. Like my wedding in 2021, my twenty-first-birthday celebration in 2002 spanned multiple days and time zones. I'd already been partying in clubs for years, but I was sick of bullshitting bouncers, passing off fake IDs—as if they didn't know. It made pretenders of us all, and that seems like such a waste of energy. I was excited to be twenty-one and leave all that behind. This was my first time to go out all nice and legal, so I went big, planning parties all over the world and getting sponsors to pay for it all. My coming-of-age birthday bash was a dancing, drinking, hobnobbing multiverse that left people paralyzed with exhaustion. Obviously, I coordinated an amazing wardrobe. This was a multiple-look event with a whole lineup of design-forward dresses, platform heels, accessories, and diamond tiaras. This was the genesis of my iconic silver chain-mail dress by Julien Macdonald—a dress Kendall Jenner cloned for her own twenty-first-birthday party in 2016. That's how timeless this garment is. I wore mine again (hell yes, I kept it!) on my last night in Marbella, Spain, when I was DJing there in 2017. Julien made me the chain-mail dress to wear at my London party at the end of London Fashion Week, where I walked in his show. I was the bride, and the bride's dress was amazing, but the first time I laid eyes on that iconic chain-mail birthday dress, I was so blown away. "This dress is everything," I said. "This dress is going to end up in a museum someday." The weight and construction are exquisitely engineered, incorporating thousands of Swarovski crystals. It moves like a liquid Slinky. The neckline is cut clear down to Argentina, so double-sided tape is needed to prevent nip slip. That usually works pretty well until you work up a sweat on the dance floor, but dancing in that dress is better than a milk bath.I fell on my face when I was running to hug somebody, so I thought I should get out of those six-inch heels. I think that's when I changed into a floaty blue mermaid dress. Backless but well built. At GO Lounge in LA, I wore a sheer pink mini studded with a trillion hand-sewn diamante beads. But nothing made me feel the way I felt dancing my ass off that night in the Stork Lounge in London in that silver Julien Macdonald dress. I want every girl to feel that way on her twenty-first birthday: free, happy, beautiful, and loved. Invincible. Heatherette made me a turquoise mermaid dress covered in Swarovski crystals to wear at Studio 54 in New York. Le Cirque put out this extreme gourmet buffet and made me a gorgeous twenty-one-tier birthday cake. After that, there was a party in Paris, France, because Paris, and then Tokyo, where I sponsored a massive party for thousands of fans, because I could never leave my Little Hiltons behind. Then I went back to LA and did a rolling bash that moved from LAX to my house on Kings Road with friends and family I'd known and loved all my life. My house on Kings Road was piled high with presents. Friends and fans all over the world sent roses, rings, bracelets, stuffed animals. So many sweet, thoughtful gifts. I was so touched by the loving words written in cards, letters, and emails. I wrote thank-you notes until my arm was ready to fall off. Curating a party crowd is a skill. Andy Warhol was the undisputed mastermind of party curation. Prince inherited the title from him and took it to the next level with the secret sauce—music. That's what stays with me from all those parties. The music and the people. My sister and my cousins. Lots of childhood friends, like Nicole Richie. The hot matriarchs: Mom, Kris Jenner, Faye Resnick, Aunt Kyle, and Aunt Kim. Random legends like P. Diddy and the restaurateur Sirio Maccioni. All the family and friends who've been a constant in my life, but also a lot of cool people who came and went because some friendships just have their seasons, and that's okay. This fascinating assortment of people danced to my handpicked playlist. Every. Body. Danced. This was before my professional DJ days, but I always had an instinct for the ebb and flow. Club music of the early aughts was made for raging: Chemical Brothers, "Star Guitar" Depeche Mode, "Freelove"DJ Disciple, "Caught Up" featuring Mia Cox Funky Green Dogs, "You Got Me (Burnin' Up)" I also had to have my soul song: Ultra Naté, "Free." At the Bellagio in Las Vegas, DJ AM played, so I knew the music would be on point. I didn't want that night to be over. For most of my adult life, if I slept without my dogs—and a lot of times even when I had them with me— nightmares chewed through my brain and tore up my stomach, so I was terrified to fall asleep. I put it off as long as I could, partying on—dancing, drinking champagne, dancing, dancing, drinking, laughing, dancing—until it was morning and my body was like, Bitch, stop. It is overrrrrrrrrr . . . And the next thing I knew, my phone was vibrating in my armpit. Someone was pounding on my hotel room door. "Paris? Paris, wake up. We have to get to the airstrip." I opened my eyes. The room reeled like a disco ball. "What? Why . . . are we . . . where are we going?" And then I remembered that I had told everyone I was going skydiving. No! Ugh. This was going to suck, but I didn't want to embarrass myself by backing out. I pulled on a tracksuit. Even after I chugged a bottle of water, my mouth felt like a sandbox. The water made me feel kind of ill, like I was about to throw up, but there was nothing else in my stomach. Maybe a little cake. I'd been so busy dancing, I never really made it over to the buffet. Usually champagne is good hangover insurance, but I also had some shots or martinis or whatever people drink at their twenty-first-birthday party. My right eyeball was in supernova. My hair follicles were screaming. On the way to a tiny airstrip outside Las Vegas, I kept telling myself: Don't be lame, don't be lame, don't be lame. I knew that if I vomited or cried or backed out, some of the people I was hanging out with would not keep that to themselves. Someone would be taking pictures and selling them. Some of these people were trusted friends, but others I didn't know that well or trust at all, and the hangover had sapped my energy to differentiate, so I defaulted to my trust no one mode and tried to pretend I was super excited. "I'm really tired," I said. "I'm just gonna . . . yeah." I covered my head with my jacket and trembled like a little wet dog. We got to the private airstrip in the wide, dry nothing somewhere outside the city. I was so dehydrated and wrung out, I couldn't even comprehend all this information the guy was giving me. Something about "blah blah tandeminstructor—blah blah jumping at thirteen thousand feet—blah blah freefalling for the first mile on the way down." And I'm sitting there like What the fuck have I gotten myself into? And then they strapped the whole apparatus on me, and shit got real. I was 100 percent sober, and I was scared. Going up in this tiny, rattlecrap airplane, everyone else was laughing and talking—yelling because the engine was so loud. The happy yappy voices felt like scissors in my ears. I just sat there. Quiet. I always get quiet when I'm scared. Like a little rabbit going purely on instinct, huddled in a silent ball, ready to take evasive maneuvers. It's humbling to be reminded that no matter how big your life is, you are still a speck of dust that can be swept off the earth in half a second. The goggles were tight on my face. That would leave a mark, I was positive. Ugh. I was sitting on the lap of this guy, a stranger, whose body was literally strapped to my body—our bodies spooned together—so that was weird, and my life was in the hands of this man, and the whole thing was so stupidly terrifying, I wanted to hurl. Then they opened the door. A blast of freezing cold air roared in. Now, above this door is the same sign you see above every door of every airplane. Red letters. All caps. THIS DOOR MUST REMAIN CLOSED There's a reason! When that door opens, the world ends. Your head gets sucked inside out. Your heart shrivels like a forgotten mushroom. THIS DOOR MUST REMAIN CLOSED But now this door is open. I'm on this bench behind some other people, and every time someone jumps, everyone else scoots forward. Someone jumps. We all scoot forward. Jump. Scoot. Jump. Scoot. My spoon-mate keeps pushing me closer to that door, yelling, "Doing great, Paris. This is gonna be awesome, Paris. Almost there, Paris. Doing great." And then we're at the door. I feel the edge under my feet. The wind is so fast and loud, it whips away the sound of my screaming, like pulling a loosethread. "On three!" says the guy, but if he ever said "three," I didn't hear it. It was like, "One," and then— Nothing. Everything. Air. Light. Unbearable brightness. A blessed rush of adrenaline. I expected to feel like I was falling. Like the ground was flying up at my face. It's not like that. You start out at thirteen thousand feet—literally miles above the earth—so even though you're falling at 120 miles per hour, the space around you is so vast, the distance so great, your perspective is that of a slow-moving cloud. There was nothing to hang on to. Nothing to let go. I opened my arms and felt unpolluted joy. Freedom. Ecstasy. Everything you want but will never get from drugs or money or even love. All the constant cravings of my adrenaline-junkie brain. Conrad Hilton was a religious man. He wrote a lot about God. Feared God. Wanted to know God. Craved God. He should have gone skydiving. The tandem instructor released the chute, and I was caught up in a slow, quiet ride, suspended above the desert like a diamond on a delicate silver chain. I stopped thinking, stopped trying, stopped wondering. The sky was crystal-blue perfection. The distant mountains were wrinkled yellow and ocher, iced with midwinter snow. The wide-open desert gave up a thousand shades of gray, sliced with highways, dotted with boxy little structures. The insignificance of anyone who'd ever loved or hurt me. The insignificance of myself. There was no audience to play for. Only profound peace. A state of grace. We descended, riding the wind, borne on soaring updrafts. Gratitude. Elation.Triumph. I'm here. I survived. I'm not afraid. I love my life. Marilyn Monroe said, "Fear is stupid. So is regret." In general, I've found this to be true. Many times, throughout my life, the most terrifying moments have led to the most fulfilling. Free-falling over the Nevada desert is just one example. I want to tell you about a few others, even though I know not everyone is going to like what I have to say. We all have that jump door inside us, and for a long time, I marked mine with red letters. All caps. THIS DOOR MUST REMAIN CLOSED Brace yourselves, bitches. We're about to pry it open
