There's No Place Like Chrome

The elusive family behind one of fashion's most unlikely phenomena explain how they built Chrome Hearts into an expensive, exclusive, and weirdly alluring empire.

- Samuel Hine

ONE AFTERNOON in 1988, Cher was rehearsing in a Los Angeles recording studio when a guy with wild, curly hair and a stern face dropped by. Richard Stark had recently started a brand called Chrome Hearts, which made jewellery, clothes, and accessories for bikers and rock stars, and he was doing the old-school version of influencer marketing: riding his Harley around town and seeing if famous people would buy his gear.

There were plenty of brands selling heavy-metal motorcycle jackets and rocker jewellery in those days, but Stark, a headstrong and clever leather wholesaler from Utica, New York, had a more luxurious vision for the genre. Through his job working with tanneries, he had access to super-thick hides normally used in upholstery, so he'd been tooling around in his Hollywood garage for a few years, making sturdy jackets he and his buddies would wear on their bikes. Thanks to a friend who worked in fashion production, the jackets were beautifully made, but the real breakthrough came when Stark and a jeweller added custom silver hardware-sterling studs, zipper pulls, and biker cross embellishments. Suddenly, a Chrome Hearts jacket would not only save your ass if you crashed your Harley but it might also get you a table at Spago.

Stark would soon become one of the most influential celebrity clothiers of his time, but in 1988, in that studio with Cher, only he knew it. We were in a rehearsal hall, Cher recalls by phone. And some weird guy comes in, all leathered out, and he had a guitar strap with him.” The guitar strap, Cher says, was gorgeous: thick black leather, with baroque silver-filigree work. The only problem? Stark wanted $5,000 (₹3.7 lakh), about double what an Hermès Birkin cost at the time. “I thought, Who is this crazy guy? I've never heard of him, and he wants $5,000 for a guitar strap?