Who Is Kit Keenan's Mom? 5 Facts About The Bachelor Contestant's Famous Parent

"The Bachelor," one of the longest-running reality shows of all time, featured a woman in Season 25 who turned heads from the moment she appeared on screen. Besides being gorgeous, as is more or less the requirement of all "Bachelor" hopefuls, Kit Keenan was an immediate standout because of her impeccable fashion game. While Keenan did make reference to having a famous mom during her stint on the show, she didn't come right out and spill the beans on who her mother was. 

As it turns out, Kit Keenan's mom is none other than award-winning fashion designer Cynthia Rowley. It's not as though Keenan is embarrassed of her mom or has a bad relationship with her; in fact, the two used to co-host the podcast "Ageless" and frequently attend events together. It was more a matter of Keenan wanting to be taken on her own merits rather than coasting on her mom's fame and accomplishments. 

As for Rowley herself, she's been in the fashion industry since the 1980s and has stayed every bit as successful and relevant throughout her multi-decades-long career. Even if you don't know her face or even her name, there's little doubt that something designed by Cynthia Rowley has caught your eye — or even your wallet — whether you realize it or not. 

Kit Keenan was trying to steer clear of Hollywood's nepo babies controversy by being somewhat vague about who her famous mom was, in order to make it on her own accomplishments. And although there wasn't a term for it back then, Cynthia Rowley might have also had that same fear, had such a thing existed when she was starting out. Rowley had not only successful parents, but also grandparents who made names for themselves in the arts long before Rowley designed her first top.

Rowley's mother was a painter, and while little is known about her beyond that, it's not hard to see how that influenced young Cynthia in her future endeavors. Her grandmother was also a painter, while her grandfather was a creative director. In fact, you've seen the work of Rowley's grandfather if you're a beer drinker, or even just walked down a beer aisle or driven past a billboard in the last 70 years — he designed the simple-yet-iconic logo for Pabst Blue Ribbon. That aesthetic, taking a deceptively simple concept but turning it into something special and enduring, would be a throughline of his granddaughter's future work in fashion and business.

Cynthia Rowley began her education in the arts at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, earning her degree from the institution in 1981. This put her in pretty lofty company, with other noted alums who went on to make their mark in the fashion world including Halston, Maria Pinto, and Sky Cubacub. But Rowley didn't bother waiting until she had her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in hand to actually get her career started. Well, she did design her first dress at age seven — but we're talking about the start of her professional fashion design career. 

While still in college, Rowley sold her first collection to famed Chicago-based retail chain Marshall Field's. She was riding a train wearing a jacket she had designed when a stranger inquired about it. As it turned out, that stranger worked for Marshall Field's, and gave Rowley her business card with instructions to come to her office that following Monday with a collection ready to present. Just like that, Rowley was already a professional fashion designer before she graduated. 

Little did she know that this chance encounter would lead to a career that would make her so famous she'd eventually be a guest judge on some of the best reality TV shows of all time — including "America's Next Top Model," "Project Runway," and others. 

Like most fashion designers, Cynthia Rowley's designs have evolved considerably over the years, always changing to either fit in with the current trends or help to create entirely new ones. But there was a pretty clearly-defined look that put her on the map, the one she gambled on when she experienced her first big break via her acclaimed fall 1995 fashion show — a show that featured Tyra Banks, Molly Ringwald, and Milla Jovovich all sporting her designs.

Beginning at that event and over the next few years, Rowley's aesthetic leaned heavily into what many of us think of when we think of girls' and women's clothing in the latter half of the 1990s and through much of the 2000s: a lot of fun, flowing fabrics and wispy details, made to sway in the breeze and dance around with every step. They were the kinds of tops, dresses, and jackets that lent themselves very nicely to dancing and twirling. Rowley didn't necessary invent that look singlehandedly, but she certainly played a big part in making it "the" look of female Millennials from their pre-teen years to their mid-20s. 

While Cynthia Rowley built her fashion and business empire on clothing, she didn't stay exclusively in that realm for long. At first, she branched off into the most obvious paths one follows from clothing — hats, sunglasses, purses, boots, and other such accessories. She then followed the next most obvious path and ventured into the world of cosmetics. But Rowley certainly didn't stop there.

Rowley's portfolio now includes home decor and office supplies, both of which were heavily featured under the designer's Swell label which she debuted in Target stores across the country in 2003. Most recently, Rowley got into the realms of sporting and athletics, with her brick-and-mortar retail stores as well as her website featuring items for both summer and winter outdoor activities — bikinis, wetsuits, and even surfboards for the former, as well as jackets, mittens, and snow pants for the latter.

When Cynthia Rowley isn't designing and marketing fashion, she's writing about it. She published her first book in 1999, "Swell: A Girl's Guide to the Good Life," co-authored with Ilene Rosenzweig. The book offers fashion and lifestyle advice, as well as related anecdotes, all aimed at the so-called "swell girl." Other books in the "Swell" line followed, all written in a similar vein but having a slightly different focus, as is made obvious by titles like "Swell Holiday" and "Home Swell Home." All of those books were co-written with Rosenzweig.

In 2007, Rowley took a slightly different angle for her budding writing career with "Slim: A Fantasy Memoir." Written by only Rowley, who also provided all of the illustrations. "Slim: A Fantasy Memoir" was described by GoodReads as "a collection of stories that are part memoir and part fiction." Spanning Rowley's early life and the beginnings of her career as a fashion designer, the stories in "Slim" are based on real events but with Rowley often allowing them to veer into exaggerated fantasy territory.

Rowley also contributed the foreword to the book "The Glow: An Inspiring Guide to Stylish Motherhood," written by Violet Gaynor and Kelly Stuart of the website The Glow.