Hopewell Valley identical twin sisters Naomi and Natalie Kinnamon, 25, have recently launched their own clothing brand based in Pennington that caters to women with Type 1 diabetes.
Kinnamon sells a variety of dresses, rompers and jumpsuits with fashionable cutouts and pockets to meet the needs of their customers. They say that their core values are inclusion, functionality, style and high quality, long lasting clothing.
They use a variety of fabric blends for their clothing, often using materials that are stretchy and comfortable for wear and are injection friendly, with cut-outs and slits where wearers can easily inject.
Their brand mission is one of a kind, as there are no other mainstream clothing brands that are currently made to address this need.
“We’re fortunate to be trailblazers in this field,” Natalie said. “People don’t really design for disabilities in the mainstream market.”
Even the idea of having pockets in each clothing article makes Kinnamon unique, as many women’s clothing lack functional pockets. A lot of their design choices revolve around the pockets that are in each piece of clothing, and this affects the type of fabric used in each article.
Naomi, who has had Type 1 diabetes since she was 11 years old, has always been interested in fashion and design alongside her twin Natalie. The two sisters have been making their own clothes since childhood, learning how to sew at just eight years old.
Their passion for creativity and design has been passed down to them from the matriarchies of their family: their grandmother, mother and aunts.
Their business idea, now known as the brand Kinnamon, has been in the making for the last two years. Naomi first got the idea after she designed a line of Type 1 diabetes accommodating clothing for her senior collection at Savannah College of Art and Design.
For more than half of Naomi’s life, she has become very familiar with the lack of accommodations in most women’s clothing for her condition. Naomi recalls the many times she would have to excuse herself at work or school to inject her insulin because there was no easy access to do so through her clothes. She has always had to keep her needs in mind when purchasing clothes.
“It came about as the perfect opportunity to design something that would accommodate me and a need I’ve always had,” Naomi said. “As soon as I started working on [the line] I saw the vision for it to become a full fledged brand. If 8 million people have Type 1 diabetes I know that a lot of people would be struggling with the same thing.”
As soon as the twins graduated from college, they looked to turn the school project into a real brand.
Naomi began designing her products by imagining silhouettes she had always wanted to wear, then creating mockups and testing where the pockets could go, how her insulin pump would fit and if the material was strong enough to hold it up, as well as if cutouts and slits would fit the image. Some silhouettes would not work with an insulin pump or phone, but through trial and error, Naomi was able to come up with styles that worked.
“There’s our Naomi Ruffle Dress which I love because it’s a stretchy bodycon with cute ruffles; I’ve never been able to wear something so form-fitting with an insulin pump before,” Naomi said.
Naomi and Natalie have hit the ground running since starting their brand in August. Kinnamon has already received “quite a few orders,” Natalie said.
Natalie focuses on website traffic and graphic design, as that was what she studied in college, while Naomi focuses on designing the clothes. Building their brand has been a joint effort.
The twins have been building brand awareness by marketing themselves through their social media: their Instagram @Kinnamon.official, their Facebook @Kinnamonclothing and their Tik Tok @Kinnamon.official. On these accounts, the sisters post videos of them packaging their clothing orders, comedic videos about being fashion designers and business co-founders, videos of their models and themselves wearing Kinnamon clothes, informational/awareness posts about Type 1 diabetes and more.
The Kinnamon twins are also able to track engagement through their website (kinnamonclothing.com) Using Shopify, they get to see where their website traffic is coming from and what demographics are purchasing their products. The sisters also utilize email marketing for subscribers.
Kinnamon also actively engages with their customers through their customer service emails, where they answer questions and have already received positive feedback on their clothing.
Their first collection is strictly dresses, jumpsuits and rompers because these items typically lack pockets and an easy access for an injection. Each piece of clothing from the collection has two pockets that can hold a phone and/or pump. Many of the clothes also have cut-outs and slits for injections, and pleats or ruffles. Each product is named after an important person in Naomi and Natalie’s families: their grandmother Irene, whom they never knew; their mother Janice; their aunt Lizzi, who also had Type 1 diabetes; their aunt Eliese; and there are also items named after the twins themselves. Natalie described their first collection as the perfect versions of Naomi’s designs from college.
Running a brand between the two of them can be difficult at times. The twins had to find their fabric supplier, factory, manufacturer, models and photographer all on their own. Naomi and Natalie balance doing web design, clothing design, cutting, ironing, sewing, scheduling, social media as well as focus on the sales and marketing of their business.
The process of building the brand has been daunting, and the co-founders have each had to wear many hats.
“A lot of this is things that we haven’t done before, and we’re just learning along the way,” Natalie said. “It’s been quite an adventure and it’s been more than two years in the making, but definitely worth all the struggles.”
Another unique component of Kinnamon is that many of their models have Type 1 diabetes.
“We definitely knew right off the bat that we wanted to have people with Type 1,” Naomi said.
The Kinnamon sisters wanted to showcase models who both do and do not have the disease, to show that their brand can be for everyone.
“It was really cool for the Type 1 diabetes [models] to see clothes that are made for them for the first time ever,” Naomi said. “We were happy to have them be the first ones to try everything on and get to showcase it.”
An undeniable characteristic of the Kinnamon is the closeness and partnership of Naomi and Natalie.
“We’ve always had similar, overlapping interests our whole lives,” Naomi said. “We’ve always very much been interested in the fine arts together.”
Although they may have their disagreements at times, they have been very happy with the way that things are going so far.
Kinnamon has also been involved in various fundraising efforts for Type 1 diabetes. In November alone they participated as vendors in three 5K walks for Breakthrough T1D, a research organization for the disease.
The sisters say that they look forward to continuing to work with this organization in the future, as a portion of all of Kinnamon orders goes toward Breakthrough T1D.
Naomi is already coming up with news designs and she is looking to expand the first collection as soon as possible. They are also looking to begin international shipping. Moreover, the sisters plan to create pieces that accommodate children, babies, and older women as well as continuing to make pieces for adults.
“Type 1 diabetes is a lifelong disease, and all sorts of people have it,” Naomi said. “We have a lot of work to do here, and we’re definitely going to focus on the difficult garments.”
Naomi and Natalie Kinnamon, 2017 graduates of Hopewell Valley Central High School, have started a clothing line designed specifically for people with Type I diabetes, a condition that necessitates the daily wearing of an insulin pump to regulate blood sugar levels.,
