KEEPING COLLEGE CLOSE TO YOUR HEART BY HUNTYR KEPHART
Timelessness, tradition and community are ideals that have inspired a stylish new way to carry your college memories with you after graduation. Pushing back on the limits of a malecatered industry and reinventing a world where collegiate jewelry can be sophisticated and have a feminine touch, cofounders and childhood best friends Kyle Garcia and Penn State Alum Elizabeth Shirley along with her sisters-in-law have built their brand, Kyle Cavan, from the ground up.
something special, you’re part of something that is incredible.”
The idea for the brand came about after Kyle felt that she didn’t have a memorable piece of college to take with her besides an old Duke sweatshirt. The typical chunky class rings and cufflinks were geared toward men, outdated and gave off a vibe that just didn’t apply to every college graduate.
Initially, Penn State even denied their request as they have strict regulations on who is able to represent and use their brand. As Kyle Cavan became more and more established, colleges and universities opened up and today the brand pairs with almost a hundred different schools and counting.
What began as just a recognition of the lack of inclusivity within the collegiate jewelry industry became the foundation for Kyle Cavan. The brand came in with a completely different approach looking to craft timeless pieces that could be worn for all of life’s big moments.
“What really sets us apart and what sometimes has allowed us to work with schools really early on in the process is that we develop architecture pieces for them,” says Garcia, “This was part of who we were since we launched but we only did it for a few schools because we wanted to make sure we talk to the audience and are doing the right pieces.”
“We wanted to create something that works for an eighteenyear-old going into college and then someone who’s eighty and celebrating a monumental moment like — say her and her husband met in college or her granddaughter is going to the same school that she went to,” says Garcia. Implemented in every piece is a token representing big accomplishments and monumental events within your life. This feeling inspired the namesake behind the brand as an ode to Garcia’s grandfather whose uplifting nature had a great influence on her — Cavan roots back to a county in Ireland where her grandfather was from. “He [Kyle’s Grandfather] walked into the room and you were in a room with a hundred people and you all felt like you were part of something bigger than yourself — he just had that ability,” says Garcia. “We’re trying to create that feeling like you’re a part of
After the initial idea, Garcia and Shirley united to get their start-up off the ground but as they moved farther into the college licensing industry, they began to unfold more and more barricades. To be able to use different university names and logos, they had to get licensing which was the opposite of easy with only about 20 percent of companies obtaining approval.
Rather than replicating every jewelry microtrend, Kyle Cavan is focused on creating timeless pieces that their audiences actually want and will hold on to forever. Their first collection was inspired by vintage coins with emblems of the seals and logos from different universities that were the opposite of the typical masculine jewelry we would typically see and instead highlighted smaller, dainty jewelry that signifies a huge moment in your life. “These are forever pieces, it’s not a fast-fashion jacket that you want to be on trend with,” says Garcia. “It needs to be able to be forever and that’s what we wanted to represent.” This idea of everlasting class jewelry continued within every collection that was created thereafter, and with every new collection came hours of thought and sentiment into all aspects of the brand.
