Ask fashion founders about their aspirations, and one phrase will come up over and over: lifestyle brand.

The term has suffered from misuse in recent years, appearing in the marketing copy of too many conventional fashion brands that happen to slap their logo on a few throw pillows or tchotchkes.

But when it works, “lifestyle” signals that a brand has a point of view strong enough to be applied across categories. It unlocks the power to attract customers into their orbit and retain them for years, even decades. More than that, a lifestyle brand has endless opportunities for expansion. While a fashion brand may reach a ceiling after entering apparel, footwear and bags, for a lifestyle brand, there are few limits.

A prime example is Ralph Lauren, who has extended his brand into home decor, pet accessories and hospitality, including the TikTok-famous Ralph’s Coffee. Hill House Home followed the same plan in reverse, starting with homewares and scoring a series of hits after expanding into fashion and accessories. It doesn’t always work though: Gap Inc. failed to convince shoppers they needed a Banana Republic couch; the brand’s furniture line, launched in 2023, barely lasted a year.

Then there’s Jenni Kayne. The Los Angeles native launched her eponymous brand in 2002, when she was just 19, and after a brief stint in luxury, landed on an assortment of luxe basics like soft cashmere sweaters, pleated skirts and relaxed trousers. Then, in 2017, the brand expanded into homewares with the launch of Jenni Kayne Home, starting with more low-lift items like blankets and candles before eventually entering the furniture business in 2021. That same year, it launched a beauty line, Oak Essentials, which announced this week it’s entering 250 Ulta Beauty doors in the US. Most uniquely, there’s the Jenni Kayne Farmhouses, residential properties the brand renovates, furnishes and uses to host events before selling.

It’s an ambitious array for a brand that hit $140 million in annual sales (excluding beauty) last year, a stage when most brands are just starting to debate their category extension, not balance multiple ones ongoing. But for Kayne, this was always the plan.

“I knew exactly what I wanted to do, which was create an all-encompassing lifestyle brand inspired by other American designers like Ralph Lauren, where you build a world that touches multiple categories,” she said. The business, she added, had to start somewhere, and because “my 19-year-old self was obsessed with fashion, it was all about clothes.” From there, its progression has mirrored her own life.

“As I bought my first home, got married, had kids, it turned into this lifestyle, focusing on interior, and then on wellness,” she said.

Fashion still represents 85 percent of sales, and that business is expanding: in 2024, the brand opened six stores, including Palm Beach, Denver and Dallas, and has plans to open two more in 2025. There are also ambitions to ramp up the other elements, particularly beauty. Oak Essentials raised a Series A funding round in September, led by Silas Capital and Unilever Ventures; its Ulta Beauty entrance is a chance for the brand to test its growth potential.

The hope is that a customer that discovers the brand through an influencer raving about its sweaters on Instagram could then pick up its moisture rich balm, and one day, buy a Jenni Kayne Home sofa (or vice versa).

But growing a beauty business is different from building one in fashion, or home, for that matter, and what lands in one category could fall flat in another. Jenni Kayne is still proving its muscle outside of fashion. Its second biggest category, home, reached $20 million in sales last year; overall sales grew 6 percent last year.

For her part, Kayne believes her minimalist and relaxed Californian aesthetic has plenty of potential.

“I always say everything’s made in the same world, it’s all through the same lens,” she said. “I just do what inspires me and feels right. It’s very consistent and true to what I believe in.”

Growing Up Alongside Its Founder

Not a “traditional learner” by nature, Kayne dropped out of design school after a year, and after a stint as a buyer for a boutique in Santa Monica, she put together a business plan for her own brand. She pitched her father, Richard Kayne, the billionaire head of investment firm Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, asking him to back her first three collections — he agreed.

In the brand’s early days, Kayne admitted that “it was really hard to get taken seriously,” in part due to her age, but also because the company was based in Los Angeles. She did what she could to make sure her brand was present in New York, showing collections at New York Fashion Week, where she was able to develop relationships with wholesalers.

The financial crisis in 2008, however, was a turning point. She had just opened the brand’s first brick-and-mortar shop the year prior in West Hollywood, Calif., and had seen the power of building that direct relationship with consumers.

“I didn’t want to play in this rat race anymore,” she said. “I wanted to stop creating these huge collections and hoping stores buy them in the way I want, and hone in on the bread and butter of the business.”

So the brand pivoted to the concept of uniform dressing, lowering its prices from true luxury to accessible splurge (its sweaters range from $195 for a wool-blend “Everyday” sweater to, at the highest end, $695 for a cashmere turtleneck). It built a line of hero products, such as its oversized Cocoon Cardigan and classic crewneck Fisherman Sweater, that it could keep stocked year-round.

Those products went on to propel sales growth; its hero assortment still represents half of Jenni Kayne’s apparel sales today. It’s been able to expand on that success by iterating on those styles, offering the same silhouettes in different colours and fabrics, or a new version of the same shape, so shoppers can buy a version for each season. After seeing the high interest in its Cocoon cardigan, for instance, it introduced the Cooper cardigan, which came in a more fitted shape with bell sleeves.

In doing so, “we were able to not only retain our existing customers who wanted a new variation, but also attract new customers who are looking for a more fashion-forward style,” said the brand’s president Kate Watters.

Also boosting sales was investment in brick-and-mortar and further expanding its assortment in fashion and beyond. It launched shoes and fine jewellery in 2008 and 2022, and the 2021 launch of furniture helped catapult the brand into a more luxury price point (its Pacific Bed costs $4,395 while the Harbor Sofa is $8,645).

In 2019, two years after the launch of Jenni Kayne home, she published her first book, Pacific Natural At Home. The brand’s catalogues, Kayne added, have been an effective tool as well.

“She’s really made this very aspirational life that she lives more accessible to people in the way that I don’t think a lot of luxury brands have,” said WhoWhatWear and Merit Cosmetics founder Katherine Power.

What’s Next

The company sees the greatest room to grow with Oak Essentials.

The sub-brand’s launch was born out of many of the same frustrations that spawned the clean beauty movement. “I heard about all these chemicals and toxins that are going into your body through everyday ingredients,” Kayne said. “Your skin is the largest surface of what you’re putting on your body, so I got really passionate about skincare.”

Rather than calling it “Jenni Kayne Beauty,” the team made the decision to give Oak Essentials its own name in order to give the brand more freedom in case they wanted to “spin it off or have an exit,” she said.

Oak Essentials has already expanded its original lineup of five products to include perfumes and body care. Arriving in Ulta Beauty will be its biggest opportunity yet to introduce the brand to new customers.

For all branches, the goal is to keep growing. Even in fashion, its most fleshed-out category, Kayne sees room for expansion, particularly in jewellery, handbags and bottoms. And once they bring someone into the brand, they’re focused on keeping them there — and introducing them to new products. Both Jenni Kayne Home and Oak Essentials offer a subscription tier; users can pay an annual fee for a 20 and 15 percent discount, respectively, on all products. Last fall, the brand offered a promotion — a free Jenni Kayne sweater for all Oak Essentials purchases above $150.

And Kayne is still conjuring new ways to bring the brand to life. The most recent is the Jenni Kayne Farmhouses, which it introduced in 2023. The team will buy a house, take it down to the studs and renovate it, dress it up in Jenni Kayne Home products, and use it as a space to host events or weekend stays for friends of the brand. The most recent iteration, in Tivoli, New York, opened this year and offered Oak Essentials facials in a greenhouse on the property. After a year or so, they’ll sell, making it as much bottom-line boost as it is brand-building exercise. (The first, in Santa Ynez, Calif, reportedly sold for just under $6 million last year.)

The hope is to eventually Airbnb the properties out to customers, giving them one more way to experience the world of Jenni Kayne.

“From the beginning, I wanted to create an American lifestyle heritage brand,” she said. “I finally feel like we’ve gotten there.”