Jenni Kayne likes to create not just a mood with her collections, but an entire world. So, it was fitting that she presented Resort ’18 in one of the cozy, velvet-curtained suites in the Greenwich Hotel. In the sitting area, there were racks of her new flannels, silk wrap dresses, and mink sandals, and in the bedroom was her debut home line, one of the final pillars of Kayne’s luxury lifestyle vision. She worked with female artisans in Peru to hand-knit the super-soft alpaca throws, pillows, and beanies (made from the same wool used in many of her sweaters), and teamed up with a charity in California that employs disabled adults to make beautiful candles in scents like musk, cedar, and currant.
Kayne approaches clothing with the same warmth and subtlety. Her coats, mules, and cashmere turtlenecks are comforting, no-brainer pieces that elevate your wardrobe and are meant to be truly lived in. That’s why you’ll never find stiletto heels in her lineup, and why her dresses come not with trendy corsets or boning, but in easy wrap silhouettes. Kayne said those dresses, in navy polka-dot or with lacy trim, were loosely inspired by Lauren Bacall and her singular take on Hollywood glamour: simple, womanly, yet slightly masculine. That look is trickling back into the zeitgeist after years of streetwear and deconstruction, and modern-day Bacall types should take a page from Kayne’s lookbook and wear their ’40s-ish dresses with hiking boots or cropped trousers.