Are Kendall and Kylie Jenner the Olsen sisters of the midprice market? Celebrity siblings bringing a new kind of style to the people?  A party Monday evening (in the prelude to New York Fashion Week, which begins on Thursday) to celebrate their new line titled (surprise!) Kendall & Kylie suggests they would like the answer to be yes.  The line, their third clothing venture, after a juniors line with PacSun and capsules with Topshop, will debut this season at stores such as Neiman Marcus, Saks and Shopbop, and it is a full collection of ready-to-wear and shoes, with items from $68 to $498.  Of course, the sisters didn’t exactly hold their event during fashion week, a canny move that suggests a little less bombast than that attached to, for example, the fashion ambitions of their in-law Kanye West (who shows on Thursday), and that they know they may need to develop things a bit further. If so, they are correct.  In general, celebrity clothing lines fall into one of two categories: collections where fashion-wearing stars have identified gaps in the market because they are unable to find the kind of garments they want to wear, and hence aim to fill that gap, and collections where fashion-wearing stars see opportunities to parlay their fame into product, and allow people to dress in more accessible versions of the high-style clothes they wear.  (Which is a nice way of saying they — or the teams that licensed their names — are copying their wardrobes, designed by other people, pretty closely.)  For examples of the first, see Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who favored somewhat shapeless schmattas of the kind Zoran used to make and were forced to supply them in the form of The Row; and Victoria Beckham, whose starting point was a desire to prove that body-conscious elegance was not an oxymoron.  For examples of the second, see Jennifer Lopez’s clothing brand with Kohl’s.  The price points and the distribution list of Kendall & Kylie suggest that the Jenner sisters’ ambitions lie more with the first — as does as an email from Kendall, noting that, when it comes to the brand, “We hope to make a lasting name in the industry and become a brand that people really love.”  According to Kylie Jenner, the sisters are involved in every aspect of the collection, from “selecting fabrics, adjusting patterns on our models, working with sketch artists, casting for photo shoots and everything else.”  So, going by that measure, how do the products stack up?  There are ruffled maxi dresses and little white baby-doll dresses. Crisscross midriff tops and bandeau tops. Draped gray jersey dresses and black-tie jumpsuits. Gingham and safari-shirt detailing. Gladiator boots and flats and fringe-fronted stiletto sandals. You get the idea.  Clothes that look a lot, in other words, like the kind of clothes often seen on Kendall (Leaving the gym in L.A.! Getting coffee in Paris! At a party!) and her sister in paparazzi photos everywhere.  The collection doesn’t move the fashion conversation forward in any way — it wouldn’t really work on a runway — but it is also perfectly presentable and relatively noncontroversial. It is an amalgam of familiar moods and looks, as opposed to a direct “homage.”  The new brand’s Instagram feed already has 1.5 million followers.
The new clothing line — baby-doll dresses, jumpsuits, gladiator boots and all — looks a lot like what the sisters wear.