We were lucky to catch up with Janie Kruse Garnett recently and have shared our conversation below.
Janie Kruse, appreciate you joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
This is a compliment and such a wonderful gift that is so often overlooked – they didn’t do things for me. They didn’t do my homework, write my essays, mend my sweaters, book my flights. And they had very high standards which they showed me by their own actions and also introducing me to excellence and explaining *how* things were excellent. Museum trips were the norm, and auctions and so on. Prices were explained like “see the dovetailing on this drawer – this is how it has lasted for 200 years. This is why it’s the best.” So the result was that you had to figure “it” out and you had a wealth of examples with the reasoning explained to guide you. Curiosity and competence are so interlinked, and a solid background eduction coupled with thorough exploration of the “whys” is the best of all base camps for the Kilimanjaro that is a creative life. Oh, and we weren’t allowed TV growing up, and “only boring people are bored” was the tenet.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
In 2013, I felt there was a lack of substantial, “bomb proof” jewelry. Everything was dainty and, in my opinion, unwearable. Antiques were the only thing that fit the bill. So I started with a capsule collection of just gold pieces, very architectural, very classic. I had maybe two clients, no one got the appeal of gold jewelry with no diamonds or gemstones that was specifically designed to be worn round the clock and get banged up and patinaed. I had “jewelry as strong as the woman who wears it” as a motto for ages. I slowly got my footing – one old school doyenne would tell another and JKG jewels made their way along the Eastern Seaboard.
I follow my frustrations – so as I had first been annoyed with dinky jewelry, I then became frustrated with the wastefulness of luxury scented candles and the unappealing-ness of eco-friendly candles. My containers are made to be reused as coffee cups (they were, in fact, modelled on my mother’s favorite cup), and soon will be 100% refillable. Then scarves were all either far too fancy/frumpy for my vibe, or some godawful modal mix (e.g. 10% silk, 90% modal but labelled as a “silk scarf,” so misleading, so gross), so I set about designing cheeky luxe silk scarves and silk/cashmere shawls, all with some kind of secret or symbolism (a map of London or Paris, par example). Then during the pandemic, I found myself thinking that bed linens were all kind of Blue Steel soulless, or a bit aggro on the multi-colored chintz front. My mother had these great floral sheets that I so vividly remembered from summers in Chatham circa 1993, and I wanted to recreate that vibe on a good, solid, crisp cotton percale, but with perhaps fewer colors so as to play better with others. And so were born the Bridge Street pattern bed linens in Hydrangea Blue and Racing Green.
I am my first customer, or my mother is, and I seek to make the most excellent things that are top of their class at doing whatever it is they do. The JKG menu, if you will, is a short list of the best stuff, like that exquisite restaurant on Ile Saint-Louis with four main courses and two deserts. You can only make good decisions.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
Excellent for money laundering.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Being a tangential part of people’s important life moments! Engagements, births, memento moris, and so on. As a child, bedtime consisted of going through my mother’s jewelry box and hearing all these wonderful stories of how she got this or that piece. I would fall asleep staring at the floral patterns on the sheets two inches from my face, dreaming about Narnia or boat racing in Arthur Ransome’s Lake District. I had a bracelet I absolutely cherished an unhealthy amount because my grandmother gave it to me. And now there are little kids hearing stories about a ring I made, or being read to sleep in JKG linens, there are people giddily walking home with a JKG shawl thrown over their shoulders after the most amazing first date, and there are new fathers who have JKG pocket squares in their blazers as they leave the hospital. It’s a really overwhelming honor.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.janiekrusegarnett.com
- Instagram: @JanieKruseGarnett
- Other: Old school catalogs via snail mail: https://www.janiekrusegarnett.com/catalogue/
Image Credits
Janie Kruse Garnett