“We offend a lot of people,” Kaeding admits cheerfully. “Motherfucker” tube socks? They’re bestsellers. “See You Next Tuesday” T-shirts? Quickly pulled by one retailer, but also bestsellers.
Language has always been central to Mother’s success. “We lock ourselves in a room after we design everything and pick all the names until it’s done,” Kaeding says. “It’s exhausting.”
If words gave Mother personality, denim established its authority.
When skinny jeans were dominating in the early 2010s, Mother introduced high-waisted, light-wash flares that looked radical by comparison. Later, its Crop Step Fray helped reignite interest in wider-leg silhouettes. Throughout shifting fashion cycles, Kaeding has often preferred embracing the silhouette that initially seems wrong.
“When you think, ‘That just looks so ill-proportioned,’ that’s exactly what you should do,” he says, crediting Becker’s adventuresome personal style for pushing him toward barrel legs and other fits before they hit the mainstream. “Fashion is all about changing. If you don’t change, you’re out of business.”
Today, he believes denim has entered its healthiest era in decades, where skinny, flare, barrel, straight and bootcut styles can coexist.
For Mother, that freedom has also enabled growth beyond jeans, into ready-to-wear, accessories, and home items such as candles and vases. Shoes and bags are next, and beauty is the dream. Mother also sells an elevated curation of third-party brands such as Alix of Bohemia, La Prestic Ouiston and Sablyn, which help to broaden its fashion reach.
Behind all of it remains a hands-on, LA manufacturing operation called Mother Ranch, with six buildings and 200 employees. Mother even acquired one of its longtime sewing factories rather than watch it disappear, producing about 20% of its volume and what it now calls “Mother Maker”.
“We actually want to physically interact with the people touching and making the clothes,” Kaeding says.
For Becker, whose business responsibilities increasingly include overseeing the company’s rapid expansion, retail has been a welcome new creative outlet.
