Easy Being Green

A look at the personal style of attorney-turned-entrepreneur Kori Green.

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Kori Green is an attorney. But she craved a creative outlet, so about a month after taking the bar exam in 2002, she learned how to make jewelry through a friend of a friend. After going through the basics — crimping beads, wrapping wire, putting on a clasp — she purchased her own beads and got to work. 

“I was so starved to be creative,” she said. “I didn’t get up from that table for days.” 

She’d sell her creations alongside practicing law at Fort Worth firm Cotten, Schmidt & Abbott, making her jewelry at home and showcasing her products at various trunk shows and local shops like You Are Here. But it wasn’t until accessories showroom Julie Hall Inc. reached out to Green three years ago to show her products at Dallas Market Center, that Green realized her business was really taking off. 

So she shifted her focus from law to Kori Green Designs, her jewelry company, which now has products in about 25 boutiques around Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana (she’s still of counsel at Cotten, Schmidt & Abbott). Last October, Green opened a studio and showroom at LOCAL Design Studios and Gallery on West Vickery Boulevard, sharing the space with children’s boutique Lila + Hayes, hair bow and bow tie company The Bow Next Door, home furnishing shop Ro Rynd Interiors, and paper type and printing company Wabash Road. 

Green describes her jewelry as “funky but still polished,” much like her personal style. She’s a fan of clean lines with a “wink,” such as a ruffled sleeve, citing You Are Here, Esther Penn, Zara and Elements in Dallas as favorite shops. 

While she mostly wears her own jewelry, she also wears anything given to her by her husband — musician Pat Green. According to Kori, he has pretty good taste in accessories — one of her favorite pieces he bought for her is a chain necklace with mixed stones, which inspired the design for her Y necklaces. 

“He buys things that I would never buy for myself, and I always end up loving them,” she says. 

Green has been running her business for about 16 years now, and yet, she says she still sometimes feels like she’s flying by the seat of her pants. Her advice to those who want to enter the creative industry: Make it personal. 

“If you just make things you really like, and it’s personal to you, people will just naturally be drawn to it.”