It could be said that music iconoclast and fashion risk-taker Madonna was one of Mark Kroeker’s influences—her 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan is why the young creative wanted to move to New York.
Another, more important influence has been Isabel Encinias, a jewelry designer who worked with Kroeker on his New York–based fashion label, Mark Kroeker/Lost Collective. She traveled to see him before every major show, helping him with jewelry pieces that finished his looks for the runway.
Over time, working on his own brand and at other clothing companies, Kroeker started to realize that while fashion might be his first love, it wasn’t his final destination. He wanted something—unlike Madonna’s stacks of bracelets and crosses from the Desperately Seeking Susan period of her career—that would last longer than just a fad or trend. And jewelry was the way that he could achieve a permanent place in people’s wardrobes.
“I was still creating beautiful product [as a fashion designer], but it was product that had a shelf life,” Kroeker says.
Kroeker says Tejen, the jewelry brand he cofounded in 2015, is the culmination of his friendships, work partnerships, and experiences. His jewelry collections, as well as upcoming projects that focus on limited editions of conceptual objets d’art, are what fuel his creativity now and give his life balance, he says.
“I’m not sure I have a jewelry philosophy—it’s more of a filter. This might sound weird and kind of obvious, but the most important thing is that I must love it,” Kroeker says. “I’m not going to ever put anything out there that I’m not proud of.”
When Kroeker was a child in the 1970s, his parents moved frequently. His earliest memories are of Istanbul, Turkey, and Tehran, Iran. Kroeker says the first jewelry pieces that caught his eye were necklaces and brooches his father purchased for his mother from antique dealers and local markets.
“I grew up seeing these pieces on her—a very groovy mix of Western and Middle Eastern fashion and jewelry,” he says. “Another memory was getting too close to the treasures—a crown in particular—at the national jewelry museum in Tehran. Not sure if an alarm went off or I was just reprimanded.”
He graduated from high school in Levelland, Texas—an apt description of the place, he says. “The name says it all. The landscape was completely flat. You could see forever,” Kroeker recalls. “The town’s population was around 12,000 residents, one high school, and a lot of cotton fields. Besides mowing yards and helping to reroof a couple homes, there was no real job until I graduated college. Most of my spare time was spent training in cross-country and gymnastics until I let the sports go.
“I realized I wasn’t going to get much farther than nationals, so I started to concentrate on the arts and building my portfolio to apply for art schools,” Kroeker says. “I got accepted to three colleges on scholarship and chose Parsons School of Design in New York. It wasn’t a hard choice.”
He graduated from Parsons in 1991, and his first job was in a Broadway costume shop making samurai armor for Shogun: The Musical. In 1997 he started his own fashion brand, Mark Kroeker/Lost Collective, which is where he says he learned the most about becoming an adult, running a business, and “the struggle to make something out of nothing.”
“I had my own fashion brand, my fashion family, and I loved what I did,” he says, but the stress was immense given he was self-financing and producing his own label. He shuttered the brand and took a break.
He was recruited to work with Donna Karan and her Urban Zen brand, and from 2002 to 2009 help create her fashion collections, red-carpet gowns, and tour wardrobe for Barbra Streisand. Yet Kroeker felt he was still searching for career satisfaction. After leaving Karan, he took other design and creative consultant positions, including at Rachel Roy from 2009 to 2011, and finally came to the realization that he wanted to work exclusively in jewelry.
“Jewelry has always been around me. I just never thought of it as something I would do on my own,” Kroeker says. “My fashion work included creating head-to-toe looks, which at times would involve styling with jewelry or collaborating with a jewelry designer. The end goal was always getting the aesthetic story told: Fashion, accessories, jewelry, the model castings, the music—all of it was important.”
Two years ago, his friend and co-worker Encinias adopted a new role of silent partner at Tejen, leaving Kroeker to redirect the brand’s business plan. The goal is to expand, adding new luxury categories. He says the industry will soon see his ideas for art, such as Object 1 or Sculpture of Gold With Leather Bag.
“Let’s see where this may go,” he says.
Top: Mark Kroeker moved as a nomad through the world and in fashion before finding a home in fine jewelry, he says. (Photos courtesy of Tejen)
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