Chrome Hearts Brand Family Introduction

Christian Stark, Laurie Lynn Stark, Richard Stark, Franky Bell Stark, Jesse Jo Stark

The Arnault family, the Pinault family... making way for the Stark family.

The family steering Chrome Hearts could be the next luxury fashion dynasty — with a rebellious edge, made in Los Angeles.

Over the past thirty years, founder Richard Stark and his wife Laurie Lynn Stark built Chrome Hearts from the ground up, from motorcycle leather to IRIS silver jewelry, to a luxury lifestyle provider offering handcrafted $165 Gothic letter logo T-shirts; $1,750 cross-shaped leather patch vintage denim; $1,490 pure silver truffle shaver; $169,000 ebony dining tables; custom car interiors, and more f***-you money sets—Elton John, Cher, Kanye, Rihanna, Guns N' Roses, and Ozzy Osbourne.

It is Stark's children—28-year-old rock singer and company Vice President Jessie Jo, and 16-year-old twins Frankie Bell and Christian, who are still in school—who are bringing the next generation into retail through collaborations with close friends like Bella Hadid, their entrepreneurial drive, and social media influence.

"We're seeing in reports based on what they're buying, what their friends are buying, what they're showing on Instagram that they suddenly have all this power," says Laurie Lynn. "Business is booming. We can't believe they say retail is dead, people aren't spending. They're closing up around us."

Chrome Hearts aesthetics

Although the Stark family declined to comment on their income, sources say they quietly sold a 10% stake in Chrome Hearts to a private equity firm for $150 million in recent years, valuing their business at over $1 billion. With this windfall, they opened more stores, targeted new categories, and launched a second collaboration with Hadid.

One recent morning, Laurie Lynn snapped away within the brand's 250,000-square-foot Hollywood campus, which spans three streets, 13 buildings, and eight factories producing apparel, accessories, furniture, eyewear, and more. As Richard's fashion-savvy counterpart to his Harley-riding, tough-guy image, she wore a custom Chrome Hearts deep purple velvet spiderweb-embossed blazer paired with black moto shorts and pale yellow suede Manolo Blahnik mules (damn her husband's woodworking dust).

"They're ready to work for you, these little descendants of information, their friends have great power," she said during a trip, pointing out that Jessi Cho designed her horror-themed music merchandise, including "Fatal Doll" T-shirts, crates being loaded onto a dock heading to St. Barths, where the brand will open its 32 nd store on December 7 th, a store conceived and designed by young Kristian, who used high school French to negotiate the lease. (To not be outdone, Kristian already has his own "adventure clothing" brand called Thrill Trip, while Frankie owns a swimwear collection called Dipped in Blue.)

In a family interview, the young Starks shared that although they'd been hanging around the factory since they could remember (and riding around on scooters), they later came to see Chrome Hearts as cool. "When Bella [Hadid] and I got really close, she said she wanted to wear Chrome Hearts—and I'm not gonna lie, I was still in the 'why is this weird stuff' phase. This is my family," Jesse Jo says, sitting in a leather chair in her father's original studio. "Then she started wearing it, and Matt [Di Giacomo, the brand's artistic creative director] had started working here in high school and making custom pieces. He brought the art and youth… and now Frankie and Christian and their friends are also putting their own spin on it."

The Starks like to create a mysterious atmosphere; their store has no sign, and they have "fk you" carved into the floor.

"One day, I was standing on the corner of Robertson Boulevard with all these kids, and they were trying to find the Chrome Hearts store," Jesse Jo said, adding that her first design for Chrome Hearts was a patchwork bag made from leather scraps when she was eight. "I could have just turned around and said, 'It's right there.' I don't know why I didn't, because I thought it was funny."

"I love this," Richard said with a laugh. He leveraged his experience in leather manufacturing and woodworking to co-found the brand with two partners in 1988, later buying out the brand.

While many are downsizing their physical retail presence, the Stark family is set to open four additional stores over the next two years. At St. Barths, they will debut the Bella Hadid "Hellz Bellz" eyewear collection, the Chrome Hearts fragrance exclusively launched at Selfridges since July, and beach-ready exclusive products such as custom surfboards and Vespa scooters. A store is slated for London's Mayfair in 2020, followed by another at the Quai Voltaire in Paris designed by architect Jean Nouvel in 2021.

Bella Hadid's Chrome Hearts "Hellz Bellz" eyewear collection launched in December 2019.

Chrome Hearts has maintained strong popularity across Asia thanks to its LA rock-and-roll aesthetic, with multiple stores in Japan, Korea, and China. The American market is actually performing best, according to Richard. The collection is sold at Chrome Hearts boutiques; at pop-in shops at Bergdorf Goodman and Selfridges; and through six independent retailers: Riccardi (Boston); Hirschlehofers; Nuages (Aspen); George Green (Chicago); Joy Fashion (St. Moritz); and Maxfield (Los Angeles).

Maxfield recently released a Chrome Hearts ebony and gold toilet plunger for $6,000 as part of the retailer's 50 th anniversary collection, which "sold out in 20 minutes," according to procurement director Sarah Stewart. Like many Los Angeles brand boutiques, Maxfield has been an early and staunch supporter of Chrome Hearts, snapping up leather jackets and leather pants in 1992, and hosting a pop-up for Di Giacomo's "Sex Records" merchandise last year, complete with an opening party featuring a performance by Jesse Jo in the parking lot.

They don't do licensing (they bought back their eyewear license from Marcolin and now manufacture it themselves) and there are no other investors beyond that. "We have a partner in our back pocket supporting our children, because when I started this company it was a 150-year-old company — hopefully many more — and I'm not going to be there forever," Richard says. "But we run this company completely on our own." Chrome Hearts has 900 employees worldwide.

The brand also does not engage in e-commerce, but as the digital age arrived, the company began expanding its presence on Instagram (with 665,000 followers, versus Jesse Jo's 250,000) and its website. The strategy so far has been to use digital tools to drive foot traffic to its physical stores, each of which features a distinct product mix, custom handcrafted furniture and fixtures, and even custom hinges and pulls.

"Little by little, we're bringing our stores online," says Laurie Lynn, the brand's official photographer. She recently filmed her children wearing these pieces in New York and at the Aoyama flagship store, as well as at the beach, for a fragrance campaign. "I believe we'll make a fortune, but that's short-sighted," she says of online sales. "We're in it for the long haul and doing things the right way."

This family lives a lifestyle similar to the Hollywood stars they cater to. They have spent over $100 million on seven homes in Malibu, spend summers on yachts in the Mediterranean, are art collectors (Laurie Lynn sits on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art and co-hosts an event during Art Basel), and spend winters either hanging on the slopes of Aspen or the beaches of St. Barts. Cher is Jessie's godmother; Kate Hudson is one of Laurie Lynn's closest friends.

Chrome Hearts frequently hosts parties during Paris Fashion Week, though the Starks prefer to operate outside the traditional fashion system. Rather than staging runway shows and presentations, they release just two collections per year alongside temporary designs and production pieces.

Part of what drives Chrome Hearts' development is its vertical manufacturing, similar to European mansions. The economic downturn was "quite severe," Richard acknowledges. "We didn't cancel the things we didn't cancel. Until that happened, we didn't realize what a great benefit it was to have control over everything we do."

At the factory, each craft has its own department: woodworking, leather goods, metalwork (hinges, fixtures, buttons), jewelry making, clothing, and more. The Stark family hires and trains new apprentices every year. "It's hard to find craftsmen. We will hire you, teach you, and pay you to keep the art alive," Richard says, noting that they use Baccarat for crystal in France and Loro Piana for cashmere in Italy.

"What I mean is, you could grow T-shirts and dress everyone in the world in them, but we want to control our products. Our SKU rationalization is fewer things, more focus," Laurie Lynn said, noting that fine jewelry is the biggest category in retail, and they are slowly adding more ready-to-wear priced above $250,000.

Bella Hadid's Chrome Hearts "Hellz Bellz" eyewear collection launched in December 2019.

Homeware is another highlight—not just furniture and doors, but also vases, incense holders, leather pillows, staplers, and other small accessories, all handcrafted. 'Customers want a piece of culture to live alongside them, not just wear it,' she said, adding that the hospitality industry is within her sights: 'I've secured the penthouse at Hyatt and a space at Soho House, but I want the whole hotel, or nothing at all.'

While the kids have given the business new life, you can see the generational differences. "I wear real leather, but I fight with it every day," Jesse Jo says. So Chrome Hearts started experimenting with synthetic leather, and like most brands, has moved away from fur—even if Richard disagrees. "There are still some animals in the world that need to be hunted..." he says, before being hushed by Laurie Lynn. "If you want to leave a legacy, you have to be open to young people, new methods, new computer systems, and philosophy," she says.

"All we do is challenge them, just like she challenges my dad," Jesse Jo says about her parents. "He always says that without Laurie Lynn, there's no color in the store."

Jesse Jo had ideas to bring Chrome Hearts into the 21 st century, one of which was drawing inspiration from the Google campus. "I want a meeting pod!" she said. "I want a meditation pod," her mother countered. (Shockingly, the brand has never made one.)

She also has ideas about design. "I saw old photos of Cher wearing my dad's old work clothes, and I said I need those now. But I transformed them to look less scruffy," said Jesse Jo about one of the family's traditional leather goods, a contemporary jumpsuit with silver Chrome Hearts button rivets, which she wore with white buttons slipping off her shoulders.

Nevertheless, ETERNITY remains the cornerstone of everything they do.

"When they were in fashion they were fashionable, but they were workwear," Richard interjected. "That's the fashion industry, and that's where Chrome Hearts doesn't play. Chrome Hearts is in the Chrome Hearts business. We've been making jeans for 30 years, and sometimes they're fashionable and sometimes they're not. That's your problem."

With such remarkable staying power, one might imagine suitors have come calling—perhaps even the Arnaults or Pinaults. "Nobody's interested," Laurie Lynn insists. "But bring them to me, I'll listen."

"I don't want to do that—I'm not interested in anyone telling me how to do s-t," Jesse Jo said pointedly. (Richard was at her camp.) "I have a lot of plans.... As creators, we as creative kids aren't done yet. This is our home, I rehearse here, I grew up here. It's so exciting to still be alive, because everyone else is just sucking on the tit. I don't know why that works for us when it doesn't, but we do everything organically—I haven't done it yet."