The $140 Million Brand Built on Beige Cashmere Sweaters
Jenni Kayne’s eponymous brand returns to New York Fashion Week with a new proposition: color
Can a beige sweater be a gateway drug? First-time buyers of the brand Jenni Kayne often come for its bestselling $495 cashmere cocoon cardigans or other cozy, neutral knits, then return for different pieces and colors. Some start stocking their bathroom cabinets with Kayne’s clean skin-care line Oak Essentials. Others level up to filling their homes with the designer’s bouclé chairs and travertine coffee tables, or attend knitting circles and sip-and-shop events at one of the 31 Jenni Kayne stores across the country.
“I don’t even like calling it a brand,” said Grace Cohn, an entrepreneur and account executive who lives in downtown New York. “I feel like it’s a community, a lifestyle and a culture of empowered women.” Since setting foot in the Jenni Kayne store at Marin Country Mart, a luxury shopping center near her hometown in Northern California, a few years ago, Cohn has become one of the label’s very important customers. She’s a member of its monthly book club and recently splurged on a “big girl purchase,” a storage hutch made of burl-wood from the home line that retailed for $7,595.
It definitely is a brand. Jenni Kayne, the designer, has expanded the clothing line she started in 2002 at age 19 into a profitable business on track to make $140 million in revenue this year, the same as 2024, the brand said. She’s tapped into a customer base—mostly women in their 30s to 50s, Kayne says—willing to spend a little more on basics to look a little better. And after years diving deeper into her niche of cozy, California chic, she’s returning to New York Fashion Week this month for the first time in 14 years, tapping celebrity stylist Kate Young to show pieces that include big pants, striped sweaters and red suede slide sandals that echo The Row.
For Kayne the person, it wasn’t enough to create the uniform of an effortless California life—she wanted to build a whole world. The daughter of investor Richard Kayne and philanthropist Suzanne Kayne, the 42-year-old designer grew up in Los Angeles and never left. (Until last year’s $8 million series A investment round for Oak Essentials, her dad was her only investor.) “I was born and bred here. I love it. Seventy [degrees] and sunny,” said Kayne. “I don’t really know how to describe it more.”
When she started out, her fashion label was edgier: sequined miniskirts, suiting in loud colors, an occasional fur. In 2013, the brand had its first viral success with a more classic style: a pair of d’Orsay flats. “This really big Chinese blogger blogged about them and when I went into the store the next day, there were shoeboxes stacked to the ceiling [waiting to be shipped out],” she said. “Our manager thought we had been hacked.”
In the late 2010s, Kayne found her niche with the elevated basics that are beloved by her customers today: soft sweaters and flowy skirts and dresses, all of which come in shades like taupe, oatmeal, camel and warm ivory. Her brand is built around uniform dressing and the idea that most people pretty much wear the same things over and over again.
“I always say that everything that we do speaks one language,” Kayne said. “It’s always grounded in nature, always trying to find this kind of softness and neutrality. How do you want to feel in your home? I want to come in and kind of exhale. That’s what drives every category.”
Online reviews of her clothing are mixed; many complain about how quickly the sweaters pill. The brand says they use the highest quality materials but due to the delicate nature of cashmere, pilling may occur over time. Still, over 80% of first-time customers return to the brand. Meghan Markle and Jennifer Garner are fans.
Kayne was a driving force during the postpandemic “quiet luxury” boom, but that’s falling out of fashion in favor of color, maximalism and bold prints. She is making adjustments. For the last year, the designer said, her customers have been saying they want more color. As she prepares to return to New York Fashion Week, Kayne is delivering on that in her spring summer 2026 collection. “It’s a lot of mixing these bold colors in a way that maybe I wouldn’t have done on my own,” Kayne said.
Young, who is known for her classic styling on clients including Dakota Johnson, Julianne Moore and Scarlett Johansson, said of the brand’s appeal, “The clothes are not for a concept of a woman or a concept of a life that doesn’t exist. It’s nice to be in Jenni’s spaces and in her world.”