Iris Kendall Doesn’t Gatekeep

Iris Kendall greets me like we’re old friends. The Love Island USA star walks in the front door of Gabriela Ceballos in SoHo, Manhattan, with a photographer and stylist in tow, and immediately gives me a hug. She’s in a white bubble mini dress and black pointed-toe boots, with beachy waves and barely there makeup that lets her famously glowy, bronzed skin show through. “I’m Iris,” she tells the store associates in a soft-spoken voice, as if there isn’t a sign outside welcoming her to our appointment at the jewelry-making shop. The employees, unsurprisingly, are fans.

Though her aura is the farthest thing from disruptive, the 25-year-old can’t help but cause a commotion wherever she goes these days. Since stepping onto the set of Love Island USA Season 7 clad in BDSM-inspired leather and wielding a whip — an outfit curated to match that night’s themed challenge — Kendall has been making a hell of an impression. She developed a reputation on the hit reality dating series as a no-drama cool girl, who formed friendships with everyone despite being placed in a love triangle immediately upon her arrival.

The L.A. native became known for her effortlessly hot outfits, iconic pout, and influencing everyone to buy the Skims boy shorts she wore to bed in the villa. Since returning home in mid-July, she’s become a certified it girl of the moment, with 3 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, brand deals with the likes of Victoria’s Secret, and a new man (more on that later). But in person, enjoying a much-needed break from the chaos of New York Fashion Week, she’s still the laid-back California girl she’s always been.

“I love keeping my peace, and I love being around people that also keep their peace,” Kendall says, as we browse the shop for charms to make our own keychains. She’s chosen a fish, a yin-yang sign, a palm tree, and a papaya (IYKYK), among others. “If I could just be in nature and be completely silent, that’s my vibe. I would be a yoga instructor in another life.” Instead, she ended up a spray-tan artist, a job she still finds calming and artistic. “I would make other people feel beautiful and feel good about themselves,” she says. “It was also fun, because I was drawing on their bodies and I felt like an artist.”

If something is off, I’m like, ‘See you.’ I try to clock it as fast as possible so I don’t get caught up in some toxic cycle.

Her dating life pre-Love Island wasn’t quite so tranquil. “I was very picky because a lot of people that I would date, their intentions weren’t to fall in love,” Kendall says. “I feel like a lot of guys in L.A. are not looking for love, and I am. I come from a family of divorced parents, so I date carefully. I really want to find somebody who is going to enhance my life, and I’m going to enhance theirs.” She learned not to stick around after someone wronged her. “If something is off, I’m like, ‘See you.’ I don’t even have to think about it. I try to clock it as fast as possible so I don’t get caught up in some toxic cycle.”

Love Island producers scouted Kendall for the show in 2024, but she wasn’t ready to take the leap at that moment. “I never really thought I would go on reality TV, and it just wasn’t in the cards for me,” she says. But when they asked again this summer, she felt differently. “I was struggling with dating, so I thought of it as a social experiment. I was going to meet somebody who was put in there for me, and I was put in there for them.”

Her bombshell entrance in Episode 9, where she kissed all seven men while they were tied up and blindfolded, was wildly out of her comfort zone. “As I think we all know now, that is really not my vibe,” Kendall says. “But I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to own it. I’m going to walk in there and think of myself as a baddie.’ I cleared my mind, almost blacked out because of how intimidated I was, but I just kind of rolled with the punches. Now I feel like I can do anything.”

By entering the show as a bombshell, Kendall was placed in the tricky position of disrupting budding relationships in the villa — putting her at odds with the group of women who had been there since Day One. In Episode 12, Love Island viewers voted to couple her up with Jeremiah Brown, breaking up his connection with Huda Mustafa. Despite a rocky start to their friendship, Kendall says she and Mustafa are closer than ever. “Our bond just became 10 times stronger,” she says. “I don’t think she ever had ill intentions towards me. She was just feeling upset about something about her guy, and I understood that. I would be the same way.”

I made good relationships by being super honest and talking about how I felt candidly.

Still, Kendall felt “alone” at the beginning of her experience. “My intentions were always good, and I will always support women through and through 100%,” she says. “But I didn’t know any of them, and I felt like ‘This is what I’m told a bombshell does — talk to everybody, get to know everybody, and give everybody a fair chance.’” Once the drama with Brown was in the rearview, she was able to settle more comfortably into friendships with the women. “I made good relationships with them by being super honest and talking about how I felt candidly,” she says. “They understood my position, and I understood theirs.”

Romantically, it took Kendall a while to find her stride. She first formed a strong connection with TJ Palma, which was cut short when he was voted off in Episode 27. Then, she had a friends-to-lovers storyline with Pepe Garcia, placing fourth in the finale. She and Garcia have since broken up, and while she doesn’t want to talk about what happened, Kendall will give a window into her latest dating update: rekindling with Palma. The former flames re-launched their relationship on Sept. 16. “TJ is somebody really special to me,” she says. “We’re just having fun hanging out, and it’s been especially exciting getting to see each other while we’re both in New York for NYFW.”

As we wait for the store associates to assemble our new keychains, I have to ask Kendall how to achieve an at-home tan as glowy as hers. Ever the girls’ girl, she’s happy to share her secrets. “You need three things: the mitt, a makeup brush, and lotion. You want to put lotion in the bottoms of your feet and the palms of your hand,” she says. She uses the Dolce Glow spray tan mist and has a hack for applying it to your face. “Dab it with a brush just on the places where the sun is going to hit, which would be your forehead and cheekbones. It’s kind of like contouring your face with a bronzer.”

The people that support me and love me, I love them as well. Their vibes are like my vibe, you know?

As for her pout, Kendall swears by moisturizing products that you can “drench” your lips in while you sleep. “I love a Tatcha lip mask. I love Aquaphor,” she says. During the day, she keeps it simple. “I don’t really use lipstick because I feel like that will just get everywhere,” she says. “I’m a really messy person, so I’d be wiping my mouth with my hand and smudging my face. I love a lip liner with lip oil over the top.”

Despite being initially “very overwhelmed” post-show, Kendall is embracing her status as a beauty icon, and she appreciates the girls who take inspo from her. “The people that support me and love me, I love them as well. Their vibes are like my vibe, you know? So I’m like, ‘We’re going to be besties.’” Earlier today, someone told her they bought a shirt with her name on it. “I was like, ‘That’s the cutest thing ever.’ They’re all so sweet.”

Like clockwork, a fan approaches her in the jewelry shop during our interview. “I saw you while I was standing outside, and I just want to say I’m obsessed with you,” she gushes. Kendall hugs her and asks for her name, and they take a selfie — posing with glossy lips pursed, obvi. We leave the shop with keychains in tow, and a new mantra playing in my head as I go home to apply self-tanner and bed-rot in my Skims boy shorts: What would Iris Kendall do?