Kylie Jenner comes on the call. It’s the day before her new brand Khy delivers its debut fashion drop—numbered 001‚ and it also happens to be Halloween. So is she even a little spooked? “I’m really nervous,” Jenner ventures. “But I’m also really excited.” By the time this micro-interview is posted, that debut drop’s 12-piece micro-offer co-designed with Berlin-based Namilia should be available on Khy’s e-store. For now, though, Jenner and her 25-strong team has its pre-registration intel with which to gauge appetite. “There’s been a strong level of interest,” she says without disclosing numbers: “And lots of engagement on all socials. It’s greater than I could have imagined.”
It’s been a week since Khy’s existence was revealed by the Wall Street Journal. Even before its launch, the newspaper named Khy winner of the Brand category at its 2023 Innovator Awards, honoring Jenner as only the third-ever recipient in the category after Nike’s Mark Parker in 2015 and Skims’s Kim Kardashian in 2021. Ever since, Khy has been subject to widespread scrutiny and speculation—just as you’d anticipate, considering the founder’s gilt-edged eyeball-metric in the global attention economy.
Yet just because her following on Instagram and TikTok is approaching half a billion people, doesn’t mean that Jenner isn’t engaging in the day-to-day grind of growing Khy from the ground up. “I want people to know how completely involved I am in this,” she says firmly. “From original concept, to designing, or co-designing if we’re working with other designers, from picking fabrics, colors, I’ve been in every fit meeting. I am the creative director of the brand and marketing. There’s not an Instagram post or video that hasn’t been personally edited by me, there hasn’t been an Instagram post that I haven’t posted myself. I do the creative for all my shoots. I’ve worked really hard on it, I’ve put my love into it, and I can’t wait for people to experience the clothes. It’s very personal.”
That personal aspect is embedded within the first drop, co-designed with Namilia’s Nan Li and Emilia Pfohl. Around the same time Namilia’s founders were studying their vocation in London’s Royal College of Art during the early 2010’s, the then-teen “King Kylie” was shaping her own digital curriculum via a Tumblr christened Kalifornia Klasss. And it’s no accident of design that Khy’s first drop is meant to reflect that formative period. Jenner says: “It is really significant. King Kylie for me was less about what I was wearing, and more about how I felt in that era. I just felt confident, free, and I didn’t care what anyone said. I think that there’s a lot of power in that—and I’m definitely channeling my King Kylie energy this year.”
So if the starting point of drop 001 channels what Jenner calls “the time when I was growing into myself,” how will what’s ahead for Khy further reflect her identity? “I’m always experimenting with my style and I’m always switching it up. That’s why it was important to us to make the drops really different.” She adds: “I think people will be surprised to see drop two, and how different it is from drop one. And we have lots of exciting things coming.” As well as future collaborations with other designers Jenner calls “iconic” (but won’t yet reveal), she will eventually drop what she calls “my independently designed core Khy line.” This will contain the fundamental building blocks of the contemporary wardrobe Jenner envisages.