When Jennie Yoon was 12 years old, her family emigrated from South Korea to Southern California. In their new home country, she and her brother chose American names, a common practice among Korean immigrants. Hye-Jung became Jennie, and Young-Jun became Kevin.
Jennie Yoon founded Kinn in 2017, after several years of a tech-focused career. But eventually she realized her line of 14k gold nameplate and initial jewelry was missing something—a piece that honored her Korean heritage and legal name. She commissioned a nameplate that said Hye-Jung in Korean, and shared a photograph of it on social media.
Now the nameplate necklace she dubbed the Dear Kaia III is one of Kinn’s best sellers, Yoon says. The necklace can be made with any name in Korean, Chinese, or Japanese, and Yoon hopes these nameplates help people feel more at home with their whole selves, as the original one did for her.
“I made it for middle-school me, who had teachers who couldn’t pronounce my given name,” Yoon says. “Nameplate necklaces have been around for a long time, like Carrie Bradshaw’s famous one on Sex and the City, but an Asian-language version has been missing in the market.”
Kinn is among the jewelry brands celebrating Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, which lasts throughout May. As a Korean American immigrant, Yoon says she is proud of her brand, its success as a business, and her efforts to create new heirlooms for her customers, friends, and family.
Yoon got an MBA from Pepperdine Graziadio Business School and worked as a recruiting manager and then in human resources for Myspace. She was employed at a global tech accessories brand when jewelry began to play a larger role in her life, following an unfortunate event for her family.
In 2015, her parents’ home was robbed and much of their jewelry was stolen. Those pieces were mostly antiques and personal treasures that had been passed down to Yoon’s mother from her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents—so they were not easily replaceable.
Yoon collected whatever photos she could of the lost jewelry and visited the Los Angeles jewelry district in hopes of finding someone who could re-create at least some of her mother’s beloved jewelry. A bench jeweler took on the project, and Yoon soaked up as much knowledge about jewelry as she could from it.
“I remember when I gave my mother the first piece of jewelry we re-created, she was in tears. We got to start again from scratch,” Yoon says.
This experience inspired her to go her own way within the jewelry industry, crafting pieces that feel modern yet also connected to customers through her gift for storytelling, Yoon says. She centers Kinn as a brand on that idea: people’s tales of their family gems and their own jewelry selections tell the story of their lives.
Kinn recently debuted its first wedding collection, Vow by Kinn, and also offers vintage collections and a Repurpose program to help customers remake heirlooms into updated styles.
“Much of my work comes from my parents’ pieces, and Kinn is my mother’s maiden name, so at the core of my jewelry brand is their story,” Yoon says.
Top: Jennie Yoon was inspired to start a jewelry brand when she shopped around for pieces to replace some stolen heirlooms her mother owned and decided she wanted to invest her tech-startup knowledge in her own company. (Photos courtesy of Kinn)
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