While working in the Los Angeles modeling scene, Kathryn Brolin frequently discussed with fellow tall women how difficult it was to find a good pair of jeans. By 2018, Brolin found the solution in Midheaven Denim, which finally offered long-legged ladies a line of denim of basic, but beautiful silhouettes.
“I don’t come from fashion. I came from a film background, so it was very new territory for me,” Brolin says. “I had some amazing mentors in the beginning who walked me through the process of making our first samples and I made four samples to start… They sold out right away.”
For one year, Midheaven Denim had a brick-and-mortar store in Malibu. It was here Brolin and team learned they needed to expand.
“It was really wonderful to have that actual physical interaction with our customer because what we were finding was that people were loving the products,” Brolin says. “[But] they would come in with their mom or their sister or their grandmother, somebody who wasn’t tall, and they would always ask us, ‘Is there anything that I can shop for?’”
Tall women will always be the top priority for Midheaven, but the brand now offers a regular inseam, in addition to the tall. Brolin explains they are also building up their plus-size category and are working on a petite collection, a testament to their advertisement that Midheaven is for all women.
“We’re just trying to target all of those categories of women who comprise the more ‘underserved’ categories in the marketplace,” Brolin says. “The beauty of social media is being able to stay in touch with our customer. They asked us what they want, we provide it, and it’s really been a grassroots operation of growth from there.”
What’s more, “denim” was dropped from the brand name to embrace their ready-to-wear catalogue. Evoking SoCal cool (and staying in touch with the work-from-home crowd), Midheaven recently released a line of loungewear.
“We were a very young company when COVID came around and so it was a little scary for us to be pursuing a new category,” Brolin reflects. “That being said, it was just the most natural next step because everybody’s wearing loungewear.”
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The collection allowed Midheaven to foray into color in a way the brand hadn’t done before. The Luna bralette and shorts set comes in burnt orange (called sienna) or dusty rose options, while the hoodie and sweatpants are either black or tie-dye (featuring a splash of light pink). A focal piece of the loungewear is the European-imported silk robes, which come in buttercream or sage and match perfectly with the sienna Luna set. The limited edition robes are a collaboration with Hollywood-beloved interior designers Louise Pierce and Emily Ward and feature their signature stripes on the trim. Midheaven is no stranger to such teamwork. The brand also recently debuted their second collaboration with New York City designer Cynthia Rowley.
“What we really want to do is continue to do what we do best, but we also want to activate different audiences that wouldn’t normally be drawn to Midheaven,” Brolin says. “We really want to embrace the use of color and unique silhouettes, which some of these collaborations are allowing us to do.”
Over the last year, (between living through a pandemic and the birth of her second child) Brolin has refocused her perspective of Midheaven.
“Instead of trying to be everything and do everything and create this massive brand with an incredibly large product offering...what I really want to do is to be very intentional and go at a pace that makes it so that every single product is for a reason,” she says.
Brolin’s consciousness is further reflected by Midheaven’s commitment to sustainability. Their fabric supplier, Candiana, has their same ethos of wanting to produce responsibly-made products. She explains that over half of Candiana’s materials are sourced from the Better Cotton Initiative and that the company has fair wages and a healthy work environment.
“If I could give anybody any advice about how to invest in clothing, it would be to invest your money wisely,” Brolin says. “Instead of trying to shop fast fashion… invest in something that’s made from quality product that’s going to last you a long time.”
For those of us looking to make such an investment, Brolin points to bell bottoms and mid- to lower rise jeans as coming back in style. At Midheaven, look to its first product, the Valentina.
“I also see color coming up next year in the spring,” she adds. “I really see people wanting those beautiful garment-dyed pieces.”
Kathryn Brolin.
Midheaven is an astrological term that marks the highest point the sun reaches in its daily trajectory across the sky. For Brolin and her team, it's a personal and company-wide guiding mission to be the best, most true version of themselves.
“A lot of that can start with putting on your clothes in the morning,” Brolin says. “We really wanted to make products that make you feel really wonderful in your skin— almost like it's a second skin. Something that gives you the confidence to go out and pursue your day with the utmost confidence, and we really found that to be true and in use of the word ‘midheaven.’”
See also: Experts Reveal Which Vintage Designer Bags Will Make a Comeback in 2022
Photography by: Courtesy Midheaven
