The serene Los Angeles house that fashion designer and lifestyle guru Jenni Kayne created with Belgian architect Vincent Van Duysen feels like a mission statement articulated in three dimensions. It tells you everything you need to know about her aesthetic sensibility, her priorities, and the DNA of her brand. With its spare, soulful volumes and its eminently calm, neutral palette of natural materials, the structure neatly encapsulates Kayne’s Cali-centric vision of gracious, effortless living. It’s a bravura performance, delivered sotto voce.
More than anything, though, the house is a proper home, a refuge Kayne shares with her husband, luxury real estate maven Richard Ehrlich; their three children, Tanner, Ripley, and Trooper; and a small menagerie of two dogs, goats, rescued mini horses, and a mini donkey named Walnut. “I learned so much building this place with Vincent—how I want to live, what matters to me, what makes the most sense for my family,” says Kayne, whose new book, Pacific Natural at Home, a love letter to great California houses and the women who created them, hits bookstores this month. “The house feels like a more grown-up version of me,” she adds.