Los Angeles-based fashion label Dôen has become one of the hottest contemporary brands in the industry. By delivering emotional products and a story told through a feminine gaze, cofounders Katherine and Margaret Kleveland have garnered a strong clientele of both aspirational and luxury customers; been spotted on the Hollywood crowd, such as Kaia Gerber, Alexandra Daddario, Brie Larson, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift and more, and released a wide-ranging collaboration with Gap this year.
Launched in 2016, the brand has seen 40 percent growth year-over-year and expects to reach $100 million in sales in 2025. It quickly transformed from a brand rooted in the cottage core aesthetic to one with a recognizable fashion bent while upholding its core pillars of being inclusive, customer- and product-driven and led by women.
During the WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit, Dôen’s cofounder sisters spoke with WWD executive editor Booth Moore about how they carved out a unique brand space, built community and grew their West Coast label, which received WWD’s 2024 Company of the Year Honor for a private company.
“As part of our mission statement, we were very clear that we were founding this company as a product- and customer-first company, as opposed to a marketing company with a product attached to it,” said Margaret, the brand’s chief executive officer.
Rather than spending a lot to acquire customers, the Dôen duo prioritized a strategy that would let them build community and incorporate feedback from customers, spending on product, assets and content to help establish “what we like to call a lifestyle that’s both aspirational but also attainable,” she added.
“We defined our customer as who our peer set was,” she said. Women who wanted to be feminine and beautiful but also effortlessly put together; mothers; women in their early careers, and those who have worked with in fashion were all included. “In a much wider sense, the female experience.”
Since its inception, the brand ethos has also been built around inclusivity.
“From a technical point of view, we founded the company as a collective,” said Margaret, who along with her sister previously worked at Joie. “Our definition of that was women who we worked with in the past in fashion, who we really had identified to be best in class in whatever their respective area was, as opposed to forming a company around a singular person, a cult of personality. We spoke about brand ethos in the sense that we wanted it to be shared. We wanted to share the credit. And in sharing those conversations about brand ethos with customers, they understand and feel engaged.”
Margaret Kleveland and Katherine Kleveland
Katie Jones/WWD
Dôen was one of the first to leverage user-generated content, which helped it build a trusted dynamic with the customer, she said.
“At a time when people were really using Instagram as a digital look book, we incorporated women into our feed that didn’t necessarily look like everyone who was modeling fashion at that time. And we started to see that women were, at the same time, emulating what our brand point of view was. They were emulating what the shoots looked like, but they were also adding in their own styling,” Margaret said.
From a design point of view, Katherine, the brand’s chief creative officer, said she’s continually inspired by feedback from customers of all ages to continue to refine the inclusive Dôen spirit.
“Hearing from people in their 20s wearing clothes for their celebration of life and experiences, it just inspires me to go back into that. Then seeing older women enjoy different products, it kind of feeds the cycle,” she said.
She said one of the best things about starting the company as direct-to-consumer was the ability to get daily and hourly raw data feedback, as opposed to design feedback from a buyer, salesperson or merchandiser. The brand’s Instagram also enables her to see what customers are enjoying, wearing and tagging. Margaret added the brand also has processed feedback from wholesale and retail partners.
All of these touchpoints get diffused into collections — as well as a healthy dose of intuition.
“Yes, there’s the ‘thing,’” Margaret said.
A disciplined approach has also helped build the brand, specifically when applied to product strategy and keeping a tight inventory.
When the brand launched with $480,000 of capital, the goal was to be able to buy and supply minimums, nurture those relationships and get customer feedback to expand. Since then, the brand has worked hard to develop a core strategy and a seasonal hero product strategy.
“Now that we do leverage a lot of different avenues for marketing, we’re really able to take inventory positions on pieces that we’ve had success with in the past, or updates to things that we know were very successful,” she said.
She said it’s important to prioritize pieces that design believes in from a marketing standpoint, even if they do not take huge inventory positions on them. Balancing this with core winning products, or “favorite characters,” she said enables customers the ability to both discover the brand and engage with it across their ever-expanding range of products, building dresses, knits, outerwear and tops into head-to-toe wardrobing.
“It is about being disciplined and focused and believing in the line while taking calculated risks on new items that we feel excited about,” Margaret said. “I know from my past that this kind of approach, it’s nothing new, but I do think brands also sometimes have a tendency to lose the plot from the customer, or they make decisions based on ego instead of actually employing and listening.”
The founders agreed that listening and casting a wider net for decision makers is a very feminine quality of leadership.
“We saw from our past what worked and really didn’t work,” Margaret said. “We worked with so many talented women leaders and decision makers, and it was our goal upon founding that we wanted to share the credit and really be able to maximize those relationships and people’s enjoyment at work.”
Katherine Kleveland and Margaret Kleveland
Katie Jones/WWD
Adding to the brand’s major year was its high-profile collaboration with Gap, which offered valuable feedback and learnings to incorporate into the Klevelands’ global expansion plan.
From a business standpoint, sales data exceeded their expectations on the first day and grew brand awareness beyond their largely coastal markets. In addition, they saw a lift during the next sales period, Katherine noted.
Looking ahead, the duo said they’re excited about category expansion with a healthy scale, and continuing to build on their retail strategy by finding the right store spaces. In addition, they’re balancing wholesale with DTC: refining core products for seasonal product offerings that they know will perform well with partners, while leading customers back into the world by gaining brand recognition.
What does resilience mean to them?
“A lot of it is grace,” Margaret said. “We really try to approach any issues…with an even keel. I think that served us so much. From a channel strategy standpoint, it’s not having huge dramatic shifts, but doing calculated changes when needed.”
She added that future success and preparation go hand-in-hand. In addition, investing in Dôen’s internal team early on has been key.
“Balance and partnership” Katherine added. “I don’t know how anyone does a business without a sister. We’ve been able to navigate tough times by partnering and having shared values, but also approaching these situations differently, and talking through what applies best to what lies in front of us.”