Milen and Jenny Krastev

Milen has created sultry leather lingerie for Kourtney Kardashian and “Game of Thrones”-inspired pieces for Jason Momoa. Recently, he started crafting a knee-length jacket for Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, otherwise known as Sting.

But those big-name projects didn’t just fall out of the sky. Both Milen and Jenny come from humble roots and have put in significant legwork to achieve their professional success.

Growing up in Varna, Bulgaria, teenage Milen hand-sewed his own budget-friendly snowboard gear, complete with a forged Burton logo. He turned his talents into what he now acknowledges (with a sense of humor and nostalgia) as a counterfeit fashion business—and an incredibly lucrative one—outfitting his neighborhood peers in high-fashion lookalikes. If a friend wanted a Champion coat but couldn’t afford one, Milen would stitch one up in a matter of hours with material sourced from the thrift store. Same with a replica of a Subwear jacket another friend saw on a Backstreet Boys music video: there was Milen, crafting a look-alike from a paused VHS tape image.

Jenny’s path to the fashion industry began with flipping through Vogue as a teenager in Valier, Montana, planning to someday design the outfits on the pages.

“I knew I wanted to do something different every day and I wanted to exercise my creativity.” Jenny explained. “I figured fashion could let me do that.”

She enrolled in the notoriously rigorous School of Fashion at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where Milen had turned his under-the-table skills into a legitimate career and was teaching courses in cutting, draping, flat pattern and sewing. Although they met through the California program, their student-professor relationship didn’t evolve until their paths crossed later in New York, where Jenny relocated after graduation to launch her career in design.

Milen eventually made the move to the Big Apple as well, in small part for his career and in large part for Jenny. Over the next decade, they followed their upward trajectories, working in some of the highest echelons of fashion in the states and abroad, until they decided to step off of the fast track in 2019 and move to Whitefish with their three children.

“Our careers have taken us so far, but what we want now is to really bring something special to this community. If I’m being honest, I’ll be fine if I never see a celebrity again,” Jenny said. “We want to serve the people in this valley and build a loyal customer base of people who understand the value of this type of work.”

Plans for the immediate future involve moving Mad Leather into an actual store, ideally a quaint “Italian cobbler-style storefront,” where customers can see the process unfold and connect with the people behind the goods.

“I think people don’t realize all of the hands that go into making a piece of clothing or a pair of shoes,” Jenny said. “This process can take days and as artists, we become invested in them as well.”

Above all, they hope to use Mad Leather as an avenue for telling their community’s stories. And for the Krastevs, there is no tale too tall, or too complex, for them to convey through their crafts.

“There is a lot of work that goes into telling someone else’s story and it’s our job to make something magnificent out of it,” Milen said. “When a customer puts on something we create they should feel comfortable in it, like it was hand made just for them. They should look fucking striking.”