Kiki de Montparnasse

Kiki de Montparnasse is a luxury lingerie and intimacy brand founded in New York in 2005 and named after Alice Prin, the Paris artists' model and cabaret singer known as Kiki de Montparnasse. It opened with a boutique in SoHo and sells silk and lace lingerie alongside sex toys, bath products, ready-to-wear and swimwear.

That mix of lingerie and pleasure products, sold in the same shop with the same packaging, was unusual in 2005. Twenty years later it is the brand's clearest identity.

Who Kiki was

Alice Prin was born in 1901 in Chatillon-sur-Seine, in Burgundy. By the 1920s she was the best-known model in Montparnasse, painted and photographed by the artists of the quarter. She lived with the American photographer Man Ray for about eight years from 1921, and he made hundreds of portraits of her, including Le Violon d'Ingres (1924), in which two f-holes are painted on her bare back so that she resembles a violin.

Prin was more than a model. She sang in cabarets, held a sold-out exhibition of her own paintings in 1927, and published Kiki's Memoirs in 1929 with introductions by Ernest Hemingway and Tsuguharu Foujita; the book was banned in the United States. At 28 she was elected Queen of Montparnasse. She died in 1953.

Why the name

Choosing her name signaled the brand's angle: Paris, the 1920s, and a woman who was openly sexual and in charge of her own image. It is a sharper reference than the usual French lingerie name, and a riskier one.

Kiki de Montparnasse opens in SoHo, 2005

Kiki de Montparnasse was co-founded by the designer Jennifer Zuccarini, who served as its creative director from its early days until 2007. The company began in an apartment with a handful of staff before opening its first store in SoHo in 2005. The shop interior, designed by Erik Bruce with the Los Angeles branding firm Commune, was described as "Parisian elegance combined with New York grit": a burlap curtain at the entrance, crushed velvet in the dressing rooms and brass hardware throughout.

Zuccarini left to become design director of intimates at Victoria's Secret in 2008, and in 2012 launched her own label, Fleur du Mal. The two brands share a certain sensibility, which is no accident.

Lingerie with toys on the shelf

The brand's product mix set it apart from luxury competitors such as Agent Provocateur and Coco de Mer, the London shop that also combined erotica and lingerie. Kiki de Montparnasse sold bras, slips, robes and garter belts in silk satin and French and Italian lace, then put designed pleasure objects, books and bath products next to them. Its own account describes pleasure items as a category it pioneered.

Owners and a second wave

The company is privately held. Its owner and chief executive, Brian Cytrynbaum, has run it in recent years. In March 2024 he appointed Alexa Cahill as global president. Cahill had previously led the international expansion of Australian label Zimmermann and most recently served as president of Milly.

The hire marked a push back into international markets. Kiki de Montparnasse ran a Valentine's Day pop-up at Harrods in London in 2024 and in 2025 showed for the first time at the Salon International de la Lingerie in Paris. It also extended the range: a lower-priced Dahlia collection at roughly 95 to 125 dollars and an expansion into swimwear.

Made in America

Unusually for a luxury lingerie brand, Kiki de Montparnasse says most of its product is made in the United States, with an atelier in its New York office for fine lace and beading work. Its pieces sell through its own website and through specialty and department stores in North America.

Twenty years on

The brand has outlasted many of the boutiques it once stood next to in SoHo. What it sells has not changed much since 2005: expensive silk and lace lingerie, sold in the same room as objects most lingerie houses still keep out of sight. Alice Prin, who sang in cabarets, wrote a memoir America banned and posed for Man Ray with paint on her back, would probably have approved.

Last updated October 7, 2026