The Cult Designers Remaking Luxury

To understand how Carol Lim and Humberto Leon have made Kenzo SA, a Paris-based luxury brand, into a popular phenomenon, you need to know that neither is a trained designer. “We were both really avid readers of magazines” as teenagers, Lim says. “As we listened to our favorite bands, we would see what they were wearing, where they would go eat.” They’ve used this voracious sensibility to build an utterly hip retail empire out of a brand that until about six years ago was known only to fashion’s most inside insiders—and in the process opened the stuffy world of high fashion to young, streetwise consumers.

Both grew up in Los Angeles as first-generation Americans—Lim’s family is from South Korea, Leon’s from China and Peru. They met as undergraduates at UC Berkeley and have been professional partners since. Their first project was Opening Ceremony, the cult boutique started in 2002 by gathering together items from a variety of designers. It soon expanded to seven influential stores in New York, L.A., and Tokyo.