Kaja Foat

Kaja Foat is one-half of Foat Design. Along with her twin sister, Zoë, she founded an inspired line of yoga apparel and active dancewear that’s called, simply, Foat. The sisters later added couture and a popular line of neck scarves fashioned from their stash of cashmere remnants. The 34-year-old sisters have an unusual cross-continental business arrangement: For the past four years, Zoë has attended to her end of the Minneapolis-based business from a tiny studio on the West Coast (her husband is a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley). Meanwhile, Kaja designs, sews, and teaches yoga from a bright, airy studio in Northeast Minneapolis—one with glistening hardwood floors and views of the Mississippi River. 

Start spreading the news: “About eight years ago, we lived in Brooklyn,” Kaja says. “Zoë worked for a studio artist and I worked for a fashion photographer. I started taking a lot of yoga classes. Then I got Zoë into it and we started making clothes for ourselves.” 

Minnesota mind: “I didn’t feel New York in my heart. I’d been there for three or four years. I needed to be around nature, around the lakes.” 

Out on a limb: “For the longest time, I would say the leg and the arm warmers were our biggest sellers—I’d say for the first six years. But now we’re getting the most attention for our rib-cage tops. As yoga teachers, it’s interesting to watch how people are bending and moving and how the ribs move with their backs.” 

Bolts of inspiration: “We get a lot of our fabric from estate sales and thrifting. Actually, a lot of our fabric isn’t secondhand, it’s just flawed materials—a lot of it comes from S. R. Harris. The big rolls that we get sometimes have holes or spots and, since we hand-cut everything, we’re able to use that fabric.” 

Favorite fibers: “Wool wicks away sweat, whereas cotton just absorbs it—so we’re big fans of wool. And silk.” 

Waste knot: “The scarves didn’t come about until a few years ago—we didn’t know what to do with all our scraps.” 

Against the grain: “People ask, ‘What’s the theme for the season?’ It’s definitely a punkish theme, but then I went ahead and made a pink top that’s really flowing and completely opposite of what I said I’m making.”

Boy, howdy: “A lot of times we go into the boy section and get boy T-shirts because they have the coolest things—spiders, skeletons.” 

Twin telepathy? “We’re very much alike and very close, but we don’t have this, like, aching heart sort of thing.”