Ask Monica Rich Kosann to share a secret she normally tells no one, and she might admit that she was a child model. She had that look: all eyes, super serious.
“When I was in front of the camera, I hated every minute of it. I was super shy,” Kosann says. “I was super happy to get behind the camera.”
That introspection through photography blossomed in high school, where Kosann also played violin. In college, she studied art history and English. During the summers, she took more art classes, traveled to Europe, and started visiting antique and flea markets. Around this time, Kosann began working as a portrait photographer.
These are the seeds that led Kosann to her work now in the jewelry business—the call to be storyteller, a love of classic, meaningful mementos, and a desire to help people look and feel their best.
“Whenever I traveled, I asked the hotel where the flea markets were,” Kosann says. “I started collecting powder compacts, cigarette cases, and lockets. These were one-of-a-kind pieces that really said something about a person’s life.”
As gifts, Kosann sometimes took one of her antique cigarette cases, inserted a photo she took, and gave it to a client or friend. Frequently, the recipient loved the image cases and asked if they could receive another, but Kosann knew there was no way to reproduce that vintage aesthetic.
Until, as the story usually goes, she decided she could do it. Her husband, and her own entrepreneurial background as a first-generation American, encouraged Kosann to start thinking about how they could take the objects she loved from the past and turn them into something modern, fresh, and personal.
“A locket is the sexiest piece of jewelry a woman can wear,” Kosann says. “When I would walk through museums and I’d see a woman wearing a locket, she’d have that look on her face, as if she wanted people to wonder: ‘What is in my locket? Is it my children? Is it my husband? Or could it be my lover?’ It’s a secret message holder.”
Today, Monica Rich Kosann creates dozens of lockets, each with an individual style and unique purpose, she says. Her jewelry appeals to all ages from her cool millennial daughters, Danielle and Laura Kosann, to her mother, who is now in her 90s.
“Lockets are to hold your secret messages, your aspirations. You should have lockets for different things, different stages of your life,” Kosann says.
Her jewelry has grown since the company’s beginning to encompass other jewelry styles, including charms, poesy rings, bracelets, chains, medallions—anything a person could wear to mark the milestones in their life. Kosann says her goal is to give her clients a piece of jewelry that makes them feel courageous, empowered, and inspired.
That continued during the pandemic with Kosann’s creation of the Locket Bar, an online service that allows clients to personalize their locket at home. Clients select a locket, pick a photo from their smartphone, tablet, or laptop, and use the site’s website tool to create the perfect size to put into their new piece of MRK jewelry.
From her early days to now, Kosann says there are some recurring themes in her work, including compasses because they mean so much to her.
“Some roads are good. Some roads aren’t. But you make it through,” Kosann says. “I always say my pieces are daily reminders that you can’t get stuck in the past. You have to move forward.”
Top: Monica Rich Kosann grew out of an arts-centric childhood into adulthood with an appreciation for tradition, vintage collectibles, and photography. She uses all of these influences in her jewelry business (all photos courtesy of Monica Rich Kosann).
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