At a desk in her family’s corporate offices, Fallon Bock carefully arranges loose gemstones, creating tiny, colorful works of art on a whim. The 28-year-old can easily visualize the amethysts, diamonds, garnets, aquamarines, and emeralds becoming earrings, pendants, or bracelets. And one day soon they will. Bock is a buyer at Bachendorf’s, the North Texas luxury jewelry house run by the Bock family for three generations.
It wasn’t a given that Bock would one day work at the Dallas offices. In fact, working for her family wasn’t something the SMU fashion journalism major ever anticipated, particularly after moving to New York. “My dad [Lawrence Bock], is great; he never pushed me,” she shares. Her perspective changed when she volunteered to assist him at a jewelry show. “I saw first-hand the level of respect he has in the industry. I was standing there watching him and realized, ‘Okay, this is a different thing than I thought it was.’” Just like that, Bock switched her career path to jewelry buyer.
She attended the Gemological Institute of America and took roles with a New York diamond dealer and a jeweler in New Jersey, where she worked under buying veteran Anne Russell. “She taught me everything I know,” Bock says. She returned home to work at Bachendorf’s just before the pandemic hit in 2020.
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