The Designer Kiel James Patrick Evokes the Perfect New England Summer.
In January 2013, Richard Ross stood outside a drab brick building in Pawtucket, R.I., a fashion pilgrim drawn to an unlikely mecca. Months earlier, Mr. Ross had learned of a designer there named Kiel James Patrick, or KJP for short, who promotes his line of nautical-inspired bracelets and other apparel robustly through social media.
Mr. Patrick’s favored medium is Instagram. In a stream of elaborately staged shots and off-the-cuff selfies, he documents the many splendors of a certain strain of New England life: sipping mimosas at the Head of the Charles Regatta; piling into a Jeep Wagoneer; organizing an Izod shirt collection. The KJP factory in Pawtucket makes frequent appearances. So does Mr. Patrick’s fiancée and business partner, a petite Jackie Kennedy-styled brunette named Sarah Vickers, along with a nattily dressed gang of 20-somethings, presumably the couple’s friends.
For the KJP crew, every season presents a photo op. Winter finds them at a Maine ski lodge. Summer brings bonfires on the beach and a “Gatsby” dress-up party at a private waterfront club in East Providence, R.I. For their engagement photo, Mr. Patrick and Ms. Vickers posed in front of an Irish castle, fireworks bursting in air. Part Camelot 2.0, part junior Ralph Lauren, the world Mr. Patrick has created is both ridiculous and highly compelling.
Mr. Ross, a theater major at Baylor University at the time, studied the photos, intrigued by the people who appeared in them. Were they really friends? Did they own these incredible houses? Were they rich kids? Was Kiel James Patrick even his real name?
“Through his Instagram he created this mystique,” Mr. Ross said. “There were so many questions left unanswered, and you couldn’t find the answers anywhere.”
Mr. Ross isn’t alone in his fascination. More than 120,000 people follow the KJP Instagram feed, and Mr. Patrick and Ms. Vickers are rushed by fans in prep enclaves from Nantucket, Mass., to Newport, R.I. So many people showed up to buy personalized bracelets at an event in Cambridge, Mass., last fall, the platform that held the KJP team broke.
Noelle Daly, a children’s clothing designer in Manhattan who counts herself a fan, said the couple paint an inviting picture. “You can envision having a clambake on the beach with them,” she said. “They’re romancing you with each photo.”
Mr. Ross was so seduced, he left Texas in search of the outdoorsy New England on display. “I wanted to be part of it so much,” he said, “I just drove up there and asked if I could.”
When he got to Pawtucket, Mr. Ross thought he had the wrong address. The factory didn’t match the glamour of the photos. “I go in and the downstairs looks like an auto body shop,” he said. Eventually, behind a second-floor door, he spotted mounted animal heads. “I knew it was the right spot.”
In photos, the KJP factory looks like a dreamscape of taxidermy and Yankee bric-a-brac. In person, the impression is amplified. Cabinets burst with croquet mallets and model sailboats. Shelves display thrift-store paintings of John F. Kennedy and Jackie. Mr. Patrick and Ms. Vickers hired a carpenter to build, inside the former dance studio, a massive wooden boat. The upper deck is a work space.
On a recent afternoon, a half-dozen workers stood around a table stuffing bracelet orders into boxes. They were all young and attractive, and dressed as if to dine at the Harvard Club. One guy had put on a gray tweed jacket and a white dress shirt. To work on the production floor. To operate a sewing machine. Between the taxidermy hanging everywhere and the bespoke wage workers, it was as if Wes Anderson had taken over a garment factory.
“It’s kind of what I want New England to be: it’s a New England fantasy,” Mr. Patrick said, explaining the look of the KJP headquarters, as well as the brand’s aesthetic. “To me, it’s classic American elegance.” (That fantasy also applies to Mr. Patrick’s surname, one he invented to go along with his new business venture. His actual last name is one he declines to disclose for reasons of privacy.)
By posing in sports cars in front of mansions and documenting his vast wardrobe, Mr. Patrick can come off on Instagram like a rich jerk, a James Spader character for the social media age. But he is friendly and down-to-earth in person, and doesn’t seem very fashion-y. He roamed the factory in rumpled brown pants from J. Crew and a plaid green flannel, talking excitedly about resurrecting American manufacturing.
The stacks of Fair Isle sweaters and other clothes, Mr. Patrick said, are from his first business with Ms. Vickers. Before the couple began making $40 upscale camp bracelets with anchor-shaped clasps, they haunted New England thrift stores to supply their online vintage clothing shop, Wicked Vintage. The clothes sold better when they photographed themselves wearing them, they said.
Mr. Patrick was not raised old-money but as the son of a detective in nearby Warwick. He and Ms. Vickers, who are both 31 and have been a couple since their teens, started Kiel James Patrick in 2008. They taught themselves to sew, handmade the first several thousand bracelets and dyed the rope by boiling it in lobster pots at his parents’ house. The Ivy League aura is an affectation: Mr. Patrick did not attend college; Ms. Vickers graduated from the University of Rhode Island.
The Gold Coast mansions, too, are marketing sleight of hand. Rather than spend money to advertise in a magazine, the couple rent a big house for a week, invite their friends, employees and college-age interns along and click away. Last summer, they photographed and frolicked their way through seven houses, finishing the season at Bailey Cottage, a 10-bedroom clapboard pile overlooking Newport Harbor in Jamestown. This summer, they are renting three houses, beginning in Martha’s Vineyard, and bringing along six paid interns for a “summer adventure school” they’re calling Camp Foxhawk (which has a dedicated Instagram account, of course).
“A lot of the kids who work for us are stylish,” said Mr. Patrick, who handles the photography, too. “We don’t tell them what to wear. They know what works.”
Ms. Vickers, who is reserved and soft-spoken, said being her own model “doesn’t come naturally to me,” but added that “in social media, you’re not really there. You’re in your room, snapping pictures.” (She also has a blog, Classy Girls Wear Pearls).
Up on the boat’s deck is an inspiration board pinned with shots by Slim Aarons and Bruce Weber. The couple take cues from those photographers’ work, sometimes copying a pose or setup. They even stayed in a house that Mr. Weber used for an Abercrombie & Fitch campaign. To Mr. Patrick, the difference between those iconic Abercrombie images, which captured a similarly preppy American milieu, and a KJP shoot is genuineness. “The thing I never liked about those photos is all those kids weren’t friends,” he said. “They weren’t living this.”
Of course, Mr. Patrick is presenting an enhanced reality, too. Stacie Browning Hall, who owns Pink Pineapple, a Newport-based clothing store that was the first to carry the Kiel James Patrick line, has noticed that the hardscrabble hometown of the KJP factory never appears on his Instagram. “I tease Kiel all the time: ‘Can you at least once put up a picture of Pawtucket?’ ” Ms. Hall said.
But there is something genuinely appealing about a stylish gang of men and women having adventures together — and other brands have noticed. Last spring, Brooks Brothers photographed the KJP crew for their catalog; they also partnered with the label for a co-branded line of bracelets and braided-rope belts. And Esquire asked Mr. Patrick and Ms. Vickers to take over the magazine’s Instagram feed during the Kentucky Derby this year.
Ms. Hall praised Mr. Patrick’s ability to drive sales through social media. At one point last summer, she said, Kiel James Patrick bracelets were selling so well, the designer couldn’t keep up with demand. (Mr. Patrick said yearly sales in dollars are in the mid-seven figures.) The American-made line, which recently expanded into shirts, is well made but hardly unique. “People want to be Kiel and Sarah,” Ms. Hall said. “That’s what sells his line.”
In recent days, the KJP crew has washed ashore on Martha’s Vineyard, posing on the sand in front of the Edgartown lighthouse, donning swim trunks for a group cannonball, wearing their most crisp khakis for a walk through Edgartown. The new crop of interns have their own tag line (“Six kids, one summer, endless adventures”) as if they are starring in a scripted production. And in a way, they are.
Mr. Ross, who has settled in Dallas and has started a social media consultancy, spent last summer as a paid intern and loved the experience. “Lobster rolls on the beach, clam chowder: I had a great New England education,” said Mr. Ross, now 24, sounding a bit forlorn to be back in Texas.
With his beginnings in the accessory market and his ability to spin a compelling All-American fantasy (not to mention his name change), Mr. Patrick reminds some of a young Ralph Lauren. But for Mr. Ross and others, Mr. Patrick’s brand of fun is more their style.
“Ralph is great, but it’s luxury,” Mr. Ross said. “Kiel just goes to the beach, hops on a friend’s boat, goes out in the water. It makes it seem much more possible to participate. Even if I’m here in Texas.”
nytimes.com
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