JADE CROO

To hear Jade play, you'll have to attend the chicest boutique events, from Chanel to Fendi, with a stop at Cartier along the way. Not into fashion brands? You can enjoy Jade’s DJ sets at NYC’s most prestigious bars and rooftops. More into design and art? The best gallery openings often feature a great DJ—if you're lucky, you might find Jade behind the booth.

Growing up in Belgium, however, meant that the music around her didn’t always resonate with her growing dreams of artistic freedom. “Belgium was small, and most of the music influences I was exposed to came from the United States,” Jade explains. She points to K3, a popular Belgian girl band, as one of the few representations that mirrored the American pop culture she longed for.

When Jade decided to pursue music professionally, it was clear that the United States was where she needed to be. She moved to New York to attend music school at NYU, feeling the weight of her decision. “It was like ‘This is my one shot,’” she says. With a traditional education behind her in Belgium, Jade was determined to make it big. “I was going to make all my dreams come true.”

“Being a musician is difficult, especially financially. It’s hard to make a living and feel rewarded. DJing allowed me to claim my own autonomy.”

There was no doubt that music would inspire our design in collaboration with Jade. Together, we created a beautiful piece of jewelry: an elegant bracelet with a circular design symbolizing a vinyl record — the origin of DJing and a timeless representation of music.

When a job is booked, we ask the client if there's any music direction, because we work for many brands and these clients often have a certain type of music that is part of their identity. If they don’t have this, we ask about their ethos, what their branding is and so on. Depending on the answer that you get from the brand, and whether that aligns with you as a DJ, you understand their world and you can start making a suitable set. But at the end of the day, no set can be too pre planned, because DJing is all about reading the room and being able to create an atmosphere on the spot. Which is honestly one of the most interesting parts of DJing.

Finding joy and excitement in the process is something that I think is crucial. It’s something that I feel like I'm applying to my life now, and something that I've struggled with in pursuing a certain dream, a certain passion all the years prior.

I think especially in the creative industries, it is going to be a crazy journey to get to wherever it is that you're trying to go. And if you're focused only on an idea of success, that end point, it's going to be really difficult for you to get there and you're going to be really miserable. But if you can find joy and excitement and appreciation in the process and every step of the way, there is no way you won't be successful and there is no way you won’t end up where you need to be.

But it's really difficult. Especially in an environment like New York. It's crazy, it's competitive. There's a lot of noise.

There is this one artist that I would love to produce with. And her name is FK Twigs. That would be my dream. I'm so inspired by her production and her songwriting.

For me, it's an exciting opportunity to combine two things that I love. I've always loved fashion ever since I was a kid, and have always been curious as to what it would be like to work in fashion, but never really understanding how I would fit in. It turns out that this is the perfect way for me to live in the fashion world a little bit without being completely immersed in it. So it's been the perfect in between. I love the intersection of different artistic expressions. That’s what is the most exciting.

If I can get to a beach and be by the ocean it will be that. I live in New York City, so that's just not possible. My ideal day off is a delicious breakfast, sunshine, maybe a little shopping spree. Seeing my friends, a delicious dinner. A good book and sleeping. That's it.