Though it was never part of the plan, Richard, Laurie Lynn, and their three children have become fashion-world celebrities. “We never wanted to be famous designers. We wanted to be successful
artists,” says Laurie Lynn, who says her kids freaked out when Drake name-dropped her in a song.” Celebrities, in turn, come to the Starks to realize their most over-the-top and luxurious flexes. Many are led by 18-year-old Kristian Stark, who introduced Chrome Hearts to the likes of Young Thug and Lil Uzi Vert, like his parents introduced the brand to the Sex Pistols and Guns N’ Roses. When Odell Beckham Jr. caught his first postseason touchdown pass during the 2022 NFL playoffs, he did so wearing Nike wide receiver gloves emblazoned with blue-and-yellow-leather biker crosses, an unofficial collab executed in Chrome Hearts’ Hollywood atelier. When Drake bought a new Rolls-Royce Cullinan, he called on Chrome Hearts to redesign it down to the leather floor mats. Why? Zack Bia, the 25-year-old DJ, Drake consigliere, and friend of Kristian, puts it this way: “Chrome Hearts is one of the greatest brands on earth.”
Which is strange, because Chrome Hearts doesn’t seem particularly well suited to capture the current fashion zeitgeist. Fashion has moved light-years beyond the heavy baroque-biker aesthetic that took off in the ’90s, and most brands associated with that polarizing movement (Von Dutch, Ed Hardy) fell off a cliff during the aughts. But Chrome Hearts has stayed true to burnished metal and leather crosses, fleurs-de-lis, and daggers that in any other context read as outdated, even tacky.
It’s also not particularly easy to buy Chrome Hearts. The company is one of few in the luxury sector without a permanent e-commerce shop, and it doesn’t advertise or publish collection images on its website. Your best bet to figure out what the brand is making at any given time, and to get your hands on it, is to go to a Chrome Hearts retail store—if you can find one. Most of the brand’s stores operate like if-you-know-you-know clubhouses, with little in the way of external signage. And the prices, which can hit the upper five digits for fine jewelry, are still as jaw-dropping as they were when Stark was slinging guitar straps.
“I have to tell you, a lot of people didn’t believe,” Cher says about Chrome Hearts in the beginning. Most people, early on, she explains, reacted to Stark’s quixotic project basically the same way she did. “They would go, ‘Oh, that’s just some guy making leather.’ ” The fashion industry still seems unsure of what to make of Chrome Hearts—despite its deeply American aesthetic, the brand wasn’t included in The Met’s recent Americana-themed Costume Institute exhibition. But it’s getting harder to ignore or write off Chrome Hearts. “Richard had a dream,” Cher says. “And it wasn’t to be ‘just some guy making leather.’ ”
You’d think that after Chrome Hearts turned him into an exceptionally rich man, Richard Stark would allow himself a bit of a break. But most days he wakes up in Malibu, where the Starks reportedly own several houses, well before dawn. By 5 a.m. he’s on his Harley, which he guns down the PCH to their factory, which spans three blocks in the center of Hollywood. He has a hangar-size office in one of the complex’s many buildings, but he can usually be found on the floor working with the hundreds of craftspeople he employs—perhaps the only head of a luxury brand who spends most of his time actually making stuff.