Kim Hastreiter is a cultural anthropologist and the original multihyphenate. An artist, creative director, curator, editor, publisher, writer, and big idea person, she is most known for co-founding PAPER Magazine in 1984. She is also an enthusiast and connector who has discoved great talents that she shared with the world. Her career identifying cultural movements and connecting the dots between style, design, and culture is legendary.

Born in New Jersey in1951, Hastreiter received her BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design where she studied with conceptual artworld legends like Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Robert Frank, and Germano Celante. She then received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, where she was mentored by the artist John Baldessari. In 1976 Hastreiter moved to New York to become an artist. She sold clothes on Madison Avenue, where she became known for the window displays she created.

After meeting the legendary street photographer Bill Cunningham in 1979, he got her a job as Style Editor for the downtown paper, Soho Weekly News. There she met David Hershkovits, and in 1984 Hastreiter and Hershkovits founded PAPER Magazine in Hastreiters kitchen. Hastreiter served as Co-CEO, editor, publisher, creative director, fashion and design director, writing a monthly column on style, design, and the zeitgeist for three decades. The team also founded papermag.com in 1994 which they designed and built in house. In 2003 they founded Extra Extra, an influencer, content and marketing agency connecting clients like Target, American Express, Estee Lauder, Google, with influencers authentically. The duo sold the company and its divisions in 2017.

Hastreiter has authored four books on culture and style including Geoffrey Beene: An American Fashion Rebel, which was published in 2008, 20 years of Style, From Abfab to Zen as well as a four volume book on photographer Paige Powell. Hastreiter has been profiled in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Crains, The LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, and has appeared on the cover of Folio Magazine. In 2020 during the Covid pandemic, Hastreiter set up an outdoor office in Washington Square Park where she designed, edited, and published a limited edition newspaper and art project called The New Now. In 2024 she created a small ongoing zine series called Memezeens, to address the fragility of history captured in the digital age.

In Spring 2025, Hastreiter will launch her next book, STUFF, which she's been working on for the past five years. STUFF is a 450 page documentation of the chaotic cultural scene Hastreiter witnessed in New York City over the last 50 years all told through the stories of her huge collection of stuff (objects, furniture, art, clothes, books, design and ephemera).