The Story Behind Katie Kime’s Colorful Austin Lifestyle Brand

In 2007, a Wall Street Journal article heralded Austin as one of Texas’s wealthiest cities per-capita, going through a fashion and luxury-goods makeover, and it outlined the plans for phase one of The Domain, a new luxury shopping center coming to Austin with a Neiman Marcus, Tiffany and Louis Vuitton. The piece soon found itself in the hands of Katie Kime, then a young artist and recent graduate of Duke University, who dreamed of starting a design studio.

That article seemed to hold the answer. If there was anywhere to pursue design, the quickly growing and entrepreneurial city of Austin seemed like a viable frontier for a blossoming creative. So, in 2008, Kime went west. 

Her current studio is located inconspicuously off Longhorn Boulevard near The Domain, but upon entering, the utilitarian surroundings give way to a colorful hub of creative energy. Nearly every inch of wall is plastered in Kime’s original wallpaper, featuring anything from botanicals to geometrics to animals. In 2013, Kime officially launched Katie Kime, which has since evolved into the highly successful, widely known and much admired lifestyle brand best known for its signature toiles, wallpapers and charming pajama sets. 

Finding inspiration in Texas

Despite being raised in North Carolina and spending the first half of her life on the East Coast, Kime says that nearly twenty years since moving, she considers herself part-Texan, an affinity not without influence. While known for having a variety of regionally inspired toiles, from California to New England, a Western sensibility pervades her collections. While Kime draws inspiration from style traditions across the nation, it’s hard to avoid the current zeitgeist around Western aesthetics. Besides, “Western is just inherently American,” Kime says. Plastered on the walls in a cheerful conference room, an oxymoron that may seem, was a colorful collage of inspiration — chunky pinstripes, summery pastels and a whole wall dedicated to an aesthetic that Kime calls “classic prep heads west,” a sophisticated mix of the polished elegance of the East and the rustic adventure of the West.

Austin has continued to transform since Kime planted her own roots, and yet, “it still feels like a small town,” she says. In the early days of her business, the one thing that made the real difference, she claimed, was her relationships and the support from the city’s other entrepreneurs — many of whom she still considers friends. And even as the ethos changes, that feeling hasn’t quite gone away. “I still feel like all of Austin refuses to capitulate fully. It’s unexpected and paradoxical,” she says. “It refused to be one thing.”

What’s next for Kime

That paradoxical nature is a key point of inspiration for an artist like Kime, who believes that “creativity is the nature of reality.” Everything, not just what she makes or sells, is a manifestation of that creative spirit, down to filling out a spreadsheet or cooking dinner. These days, she’s renovating a property in Round Top, which, to her, feels like a return to her first passion: seeing the home as an opportunity to infuse art and beauty into everyday life. It is, in many ways, the same impulse that brought her to Austin in the first place — to lay roots, but let imagination thrive. 

For Kime, Austin became a place to build and a place to belong. Austin may have changed considerably since she went west, but perhaps its refusal to be one thing is what has allowed it — and Kime — to keep evolving without losing its sense of self. The frontier never goes away; it just becomes something else: a new idea, a new design or a new wallpaper. And with every little change that comes to the city, as Kime sees, “it keeps getting a little more exciting.”