‘Stepping up her game’: Kylie Jenner to release ‘quiet luxury’ fashion label
Kylie Jenner is “stepping up her game”, with reports she’s set to launch a massive new venture in the coming months.
Lifestyle
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Kylie Jenner will go up against Kim and Khloe Kardashian and launch a new fashion range.
According to Page Six, the 26-year-old billionaire has signed on with Jens and Emma Grede, the husband-and-wife fashion team behind Kim’s hugely successful Skims and Khloe’s Good American denim range.
“All the girls each have their own vision,” a source told the outlet. “They inspire and whip each other up. They’re all so different and independent, but they give each other a ton of advice.”
At the end of 2019, Jenner sold 51 per cent of her cosmetics and skincare brand, Kylie Cosmetics, to French-American multinational beauty company Coty for $US600 million ($993.2 million), a price tag that valued the company at $US1.2 billion ($1.86 billion).
Meanwhile, Kim’s shapewear and lingerie brand was valued at a staggering $US4 billion ($6.2 billion) last month – and she’s also in talks with Coty to buy back the minority stake she sold in her beauty firm, SKKN.
Jenner was barely in her teens when she and her older sister, model Kendall Jenner, released their own line, Kendall + Kylie, back in 2012, in collaboration with the retailer PacSun. The licence deal reportedly ended earlier this year.
“Kylie has always been in fashion, and she’s stepping up her game,” a fashion insider said.
“She’s always had a very clear vision.”
Jenner, who recently modelled for French couturier Jean Paul Gaultier’s summer campaign, is taking on Kim as the style icon in the family. She’s also the new of Dolce & Gabbana eyewear and handbags, and, Page Six is told, has another fashion campaign coming this season.
She stunned at Paris Fashion Week last September, channelling her inner Julia Fox and wearing white briefs and a tank top to the Loewe show. Next, she turned up in a super-plunging Schiaparelli gown to the couture house’s presentation, before showing off in a sheer lace catsuit at the Business of Fashion gala.
In January, the star hit the headlines when she donned an eerily lifelike lion dress at the Schiaparelli show, again in Paris.
“She’s gotten a ton of validation around what she’s wearing and who she’s partnering with,” said the source.
Meanwhile, Kim has been honest about how her style was affected by her very public divorce from Kanye West, saying last year: “I definitely see what I like, but I’ve never really been the visionary.”
“Kanye would come in and be like, ‘You should do your hair like this. You should do your makeup like this.’ That’s his love language, it’s clothes,” she said.
“I’m trying to figure out, who am I in the fashion world, or who am I by myself?”
Fashion news and features director at the UK Telegraph, Bethan Holt, told Page Six that divisive as the Kardashian-Jenner clan may be, their impact on the fashion industry “can’t really be overstated”.
“I think certain labels take them very seriously and recognise their power – like Marc Jacobs choosing Kim for his latest [Fall 2023] ad campaign – even if it feels like there’s a slightly ironic tone to that,” Holt said.
“It feels only natural that Kylie would choose to further monetise her status with her own fashion brand after it worked so well with her beauty line.”
She added that it can pay to have your own label rather than boosting another brand’s reputation, pointing to the success of Kim’s Skims, the reach of which has now gone “far beyond [her] superfans”.
“They’re really filling a gap in the market,” Holt said. When it comes to Kylie’s new venture, “anything which challenges the wasteful and polluting Shein business model can only be a good thing”.
Jenner, who has two young children – daughter Stormi, five, and son Aire, one – with ex-boyfriend Travis Scott, has gone through an image overhaul of late.
She’s currently linked to actor Timothee Chalamet and, this past July, admitted to having a boob job before becoming a mum – a decision she regrets.
“I had beautiful breasts, like natural t*ts. Just gorgeous. Perfect size, perfect everything,” she said in an episode of The Kardashians.
“I just wish, obviously, I never got them done to begin with.”
She also spoke out this year about suffering from post-partum depression, saying she thought it “would never pass” after the births of both her children.
Her candidness has come as a welcome surprise and should be good for business, said an insider. “I don’t think anyone expected her to be that open about it, but it’s so important that she did.”
The news that Jenner is now partnering with the Gredes was first reported by Puck’s fashion writer Lauren Sherman.
And, despite rumours that it will be “fast fashion”, industry insiders were keen to stress it won’t be cheap – and absolutely nothing like China-based e-commerce giant Shein.
Instead, Jenner may turn to a range that skews to “quiet luxury”.
“They need to distance their brands from unsustainable and unethical practices, [and not] produce clothes in such volume that if they don’t sell them all they get stuck in landfills,” one well-placed fashion expert said.
“Quite rightly, they don’t want to be tarred with that fast fashion brush. No one does – except Love Island contestants, who will take whatever deal they can get.”
The relatively high price points of both Skims and Good American reflect some commitment from the family when it comes to quality and sustainability.
Jenner’s reported collaborators, the Gredes, also have impeccable fashion credentials.
Swedish Jens co-founded Frame Denim with Erik Torstensson, meeting Londoner Emma when she worked at his former marketing firm, Saturday Group.
Emma kept bumping into the Kardashian-Jenner family at fashion week – and instead of being snobby about them, like many fashion insiders, saw their huge potential.
She pitched Good American first to matriarch Kris Jenner before taking the idea to Khloe – with the two co-founding the size-inclusive brand in 2016. Last year, it was slated to bring in $US200 million ($311 million).
Puck reported that Gredes’ team at their company, Popular Culture, has begun interviewing candidates for certain positions without telling them anything about the project.
The duo have their hands full as they are currently running Skims on a day-to-day basis.
The plan is to open multiple Skims stores next year — it’s currently online only.
The Gredes are also both co-founders of Safely, the cleaning products line that Emma fronts alongside Kris, which made $US10 million ($15.5 million) last year, and recently launched at Target alongside grocery chain Kroger.
“You can’t just do a celebrity brand — I find that completely uninteresting,” Emma told Business of Fashion last year.
“For me it’s about, first and foremost, trying to solve a problem.”
Yet, for all of the clan’s lucrative entrepreneurial ventures, a family insider insisted, “The girls are not competitive. They’re so supportive of each other.”
And, Kris, ever the momager, has a more is more philosophy when it comes to business dealings.
“Working with my kids on their brands is such a blessing,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Page Six and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as ‘Stepping up her game’: Kylie Jenner to release ‘quiet luxury’ fashion label
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