Kitten Tropic
Kitten Tropic is paradise. I helped founder Nicole rebrand her swim line to reflect the growth and maturity she has found since moving to Miami.
Kitten Tropic is paradise. I helped founder Nicole rebrand her swim line to reflect the growth and maturity she has found since moving to Miami.
2012, New York City.
Nicole and I have been friends for over a decade. She is one of those people you notice immediately, fashion adjacent, Williamsburg girl, a very specific energy. Quiet at first, but with a lot to say once you crack her open. We met outside of News Corp in Midtown, introduced by a guy I had just started dating who happened to be her manager in the fashion closet at the New York Post. We grew up in neighboring towns in Massachusetts and shared that same desire to run to New York and see what happens.
We started supporting each other naturally and quickly. She motivated me to get my first job as an engineer in SoHo, meeting me after my shift for coffee to hear how it was going. Nicole is business minded, grounded, Virgo energy where I am filled with random skills, high energy, confidence. We have always traded these powers with each other to move our dreams forward. I remember the first time she mentioned Kitten Tropic to me, her finally stepping into making her vision a reality. I was so proud to see her creating a space to put her creative energy and I wanted to help in every way I could. She always loved that world, glittery, beautiful strong women, femininity as a superpower. I understood her vision and I was able to offer her my technical expertise to help her build an online identity.
The first Kitten Tropic site, with the original logo and the Enter the Bikini Shop button we loved.
The first site.
Once she had her first line ready, we built her first site on Shopify. The images from her shoot in Miami were stunning — the swim looked beautiful, the models were beautiful, and the city brought her whole vision together, shot by Miami-based photographer Valeria Sarto. She had also finalized her first logo, Kitten Tropic in playful bubble letters with a pink and orange gradient. It was juicy, young, playful, girly.
I had spent nearly ten years working as an engineer but had never been trusted to design an entire site from scratch. I started the process by just putting content on the page, using the beautiful imagery as my compass. I added gradients, playful copy, little quirky animations to embody that beachy, casual feeling you get when you discover something new. Nicole and I loved it. It was the first time we let her creativity and my instincts fully merge and we were excited to see what it produced. We had created something together that legitimized the brand, drove her first round of sales, and got the product in front of the right people. Kitten was starting to get the visibility it deserved, including seeing her swim on Emily Ratajkowski.
Kittens in the wild, including Emily Ratajkowski's feature in the New York Post.
Domino Park.
Years later I found myself walking along the Williamsburg waterfront when I bumped into Nicole after years of not talking. It was a strange and perfect moment. I had been living in Providence and was in the city briefly before moving to Miami, news that felt urgent to share with her now that she was standing right in front of me. To my surprise, Nicole was also planning to move to Miami at the same time. That revelation lifted whatever distance had grown between us, a reminder that our connection runs deeper than the noise that had pushed us apart. A month or so later we met at Motek to catch up and regroup.
Nicole had grown so much. It was beautiful to sit across from someone whose soul I knew but whose spirit had evolved beyond what I had experienced. She was mature, more opinionated, excited about her new era, fully herself. She wanted to inject all of that into a rebrand of Kitten Tropic, rethinking the brand and updating the site from the ground up. We picked up right where we left off and got back to work.
Photo by Valeria Sarto for Kitten's second campaign.
Kitten Tropic is a direct reflection of who Nicole is and who she is becoming.
Kitten wakes up in Miami.
What I find most interesting about the rebrand is how clearly it reflects where Nicole is as a person and as a business owner. The first site was about establishing a world and this one is about running a business inside it.
She started with the logo, giving Kitten a bit more of that wink, darkness, and refined edge. She committed to two brand colors, orange and pink. She approached the site from a more commercial lens this time, asking harder questions about how someone moves from discovery to purchase. Instead of full bleed editorial imagery she chose ghost mannequin product shots, letting the product speak for itself. She was focused on how the site functioned, finding opportunities to honor Miami's art deco architecture through circular cutouts, adding a cheekiness to the interactions, models peeking through the holes when you hover. She was learning how to art direct her vision, placing her business mind on the design decisions being made by our collaborator Ricky.
Stills from Kitten's rebrand — the new site, the new cart, the new vibe.
My job was to translate all of that into a build that could actually support where she wanted to go. I maintained her existing Shopify backend while building a fully custom headless frontend with Next.js and Vercel. Going headless was a deliberate choice. A standard Shopify theme gives you a storefront. A headless build gives you a platform, separating the commerce logic from the presentation layer entirely. It means Nicole can evolve the experience, add features, and grow the brand without being constrained by what a theme can or cannot do. I wanted to make sure we made something that could continue to grow with Nicole's new vision and goals for the brand.
Mobile and desktop comps of the new Kitten Tropic rebrand.
A new beginning.
The launch of the new Kitten Tropic is a breath of fresh air for Miami and the swim world. Nicole honors everything that made the brand special from the beginning, that girl who loves the beach, feeling the sun, flirting, sipping a piña colada. But she has used her life experience, her growth, her struggles and accomplishments, to elevate it into something that matches who she is now, a strong woman who does business and makes decisions. This project has reminded me how beautiful business can be when it is as personal as Nicole makes it.
I am so excited for the new Kitten Tropic to strut down South Beach. I see a future at Miami Swim Week, a flagship store, racks at hotels and coffee shops across the city. This brand embodies hope, sophistication, style, and wit. You can shop Kitten Tropic now at kittentropic.com. Find a gorgeous bikini, speedo, or accessory for your next trip to paradise.
