Jody Kozlow Gardner
Jody is a New York-based ceramicist whose style embraces the natural movement of clay, allowing it to showcase itself organically in texture, shape, and form.
After years in fashion, Jody enrolled in NYU’s graduate program in Nutrition and Food Studies. In 2020, she graduated with her master’s, intending to work in the food space. However, mid-pandemic, she discovered clay and soon spent most of her free time in the pottery studio. As a fashion designer with a frustrating inability to draw, she immediately took to the 3D nature of clay as she had working with fabric.
The co-founder of an innovative fashion start-up that revolutionized the concept of maternity, Jody’s company Belly Basics took the world by storm. Her innovative product, The Pregnancy Survival Kit, was sold in over ten countries with multiple worldwide licensees. She wrote the definitive book on pregnancy style, Pregnancy Chic, which was published by Random House. Celebrating the pregnant body, the book offered endless ideas for creative dressing.
When not deep in clay, Jody remains an active investor in the food space, focusing on early and mid-stage food investing.
Current investments
Matchaful, Golde, Wooden Spoon Herbs, Ghia, Tourlami (plant-based butter), Monte’s Fine Foods, Chillhouse, BODY vodka and House of Kajaana
Say hi at jkozgardner@mac.com
Why the name Wolf Rose? Wolf and Rose Kozlow immigrated in the late 1800s to Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula. A fur trapper in his native Ukraine, Wolf sought a similar climate in America. They soon moved to Detroit to escape the cold and opened People’s General Store, selling hardware, canned goods, and clothing. The youngest of their five children was Jody’s grandfather.
The names Wolf and Rose evoke opposite images: a wolf stalks its prey while a fragrant rose blooms in the garden. Jody’s work embraces opposing forces: rustic-urban, soft-hard, and historic-modern; the name
captures this aesthetic.
Photo: Wolf & Rose Kozlow circa 1900