Gaye Straza

Having spent portions of her childhood in Hawaii, Gaye Straza found herself drawn to natural, beautiful scents: the simple, the clean, the unabashedly pretty. But years of owning a boutique in Malibu meant that she was constantly encountering heavy, cloying, expensive fragrances that bothered her nose and skin alike. Countless hours of work with a small boutique fragrance house produced the first prototypes of Kai, and Straza ran with the results. Today, she oversees the full range of Kai, which has proven itself to be a bona fide cult classic.