Why hardware on clothing is worth the hassle

Walking through a metal detector has never been a seamless experience for me. I brace my nervous system for the piercing shriek, let it play like my own little theme song. It only takes one glance from the security guard — their eye catching the light dancing off of the studs, the spikes, the grommets, the O-rings, the chains — to understand. Hardware complicates my life, but I love it anyway. It has nothing to do with efficiency, and actually, for something with a reputation so closely glued to antiestablishment aesthetics and fashions of the counterculture, is quite frivolous if you think about it. “Look at my shiny things. Don’t they make me look tough? Don’t they make me look pretty? Look again, but don’t touch.”

My least favorite genre of fake-deep slam poetry is when someone equates putting on their hoop earrings every day to donning their armor (sorry, but you know the type). There is also a very real chance that I’ve done that before if you read back far enough (don’t) and maybe that’s also what I’m about to do here (again, sorry). Being the kind of person who adorns themselves compulsively opens you up to a slew of corny metaphors that, against your will, feel deeply relevant to you. Maybe the only way to justify a magnetic attraction to wanting my bags, shoes and belts to be studded, spiky, pierced and heavy is by connecting the dots. Ancient Egyptians understood hardware just like punks understood hardware just like bikers understood hardware just like I, walking through my office metal detector every week, understand hardware.

Valentine wears Dsquared2 corset, Zana Bayne skirt, Valentino shoes, MCM sunglasses, Quality Zeeman necklace, Elizabeth Hooper bracelet and ring, Aslan bracelet, Hirotaka earrings and ring, stylist’s own earring, gloves, tights and underwear, Rimowa suitcase and Prada bag. Collin, above, wears Gucci jacket and pants, Comme des Garçons top, Versace sunglasses, Dsquared2 shoes and large belt, Noritamy belt chain, Hirotaka ring and stylist’s own small belt.

My best friend Paloma and I used to go to the Spring Valley swap meet every Sunday when we were growing up. We would loiter, mostly, and eat the shredded beef nachos that I still think about to this day while the plastic of our high-top Converse grilled on the scalding asphalt. There was one stand we’d visit religiously that sold faded band T-shirts, dank bags of incense that left a spiced oil slick on your fingertips and customized bracelets that were woven on the spot in Rasta colors donning your nickname. Sunburned in my memory was the wall of belts, cuffs and chokers dripping gloriously in silver studs. The glare of the metal painted a mirage in the desiccated swap meet landscape, emitting an orb of heat and undeniable beauty. In nature, it’s believed that some beetles are shiny for camouflage, protection and mating purposes. It helps them hide if needed, it blinds predators and attracts like minds. Humans aren’t so different. I collected these studded belts, slung them slipshod over whatever was in style at the time that I’ve blocked from my memory, and it felt like a biological necessity. Studs never helped me camouflage, exactly, but they did and do ground me. When bouts of dissociation started to become par for the course, wearing hardware reminded me I was in a body on planet Earth. I’d run my fingers across the convex pyramid textures in the same way other people lay under a weighted blanket or ate sour candy, jolting my subconscious back into the here and now. In other situations, I hoped that my studded accessories would communicate to predators that I do not identify as prey. That I was not to be f— with. And to keep it moving.

Hardware has been a tentacle of my personal style code since, infiltrating every part of my closet, home and life. I have a vintage chair that is punctuated with bronze round studs. A charcoal ceramic incense burner molded to look like a studded belt. My coffee table is made of aluminum and resembles barbed wire. My lamp is a French antique with a heavy iron chain link as its base.

Hardware is an adornment that exists comfortably in both the low and high, because it forces any medium to meet it where it’s at. In the years after the swap meet, my special interest became finding Prada accessories that prominently featured hardware, which was easier than the uninitiated might imagine. Prada has incorporated hardware in its collections in both subtle and obvious formats for decades — from the metal handles on the swing bags from spring 2003, to the mall rat-coded studded messenger bags from spring 2018. I hold a fantasy that Mrs. Prada — known for her younger days as a political protester — may see things the same way as I do: That hardware on a designer bag feels like cheating the system. Sticking it to the man in a way that the man might not even notice and might even say thank you for. Being bad but getting away with it anyway because it’s chic.

I take my little rebellions where I can, and it’s always nice when the vehicle for those little rebellions is a fine grain leather made in Italy. Over the years, other design houses have adopted hardware as part of their codes too. Think of the Valentino Rockstud. The Sonia Rykiel Domino bag. Comme des Garçons, then, now and forever. Rabanne, which has built an entire brand and silhouette around heavy metal. Dior’s Hardcore era, with pierced bags from 20 years ago that are still deeply coveted. The fall 2026 collection from Georgian brand Lado Bokuchava is a silver grommet fantasia, and Hodakova has been making elegantly articulated spiky clothing for a number of seasons now.

Hardware is a universal classic — as much as diamonds or pearls are a universal classic. When I saw the distressed leather dress riddled with O-rings and ball-gag loafers walk down the runway in Prada’s women’s spring 2025 collection, I felt validated and giddy. The show notes at the time emphasized the clothes as torches of spontaneity in an algorithmic world, and argued for a worldview where “humanity can be defined by its unpredictability, a rejection of the derivative and expected.” The key words here are unpredictability and rejection. Adornment is at its best when it feels wild and uncontained; when it’s both scary and intriguing. The algorithm didn’t exist when I was shopping for studded belts in Spring Valley — it was a baser instinct thing, something my brain had an immediate and raw reaction to. That hasn’t changed.

I don’t have any expensive family heirlooms to speak of (except, if you’re reading this, Mom, your undying love of course!). But the idea that future generations will inherit my studded Prada Buffalo Easy bag to remember me by makes me laugh. Every time they walk through a metal detector, they’ll say, “This belonged to my great-great-grandmother Julissa. It’s all I have left of her. She never quite grew out of her swap meet goth phase, but she was very special to me.”

Valentine wears Marni top and skirt, Vaquera harness from Depop, Valentino shoes, Acne Studios socks and Tiffany & Co. jewelry.

Collin wears Haider Ackerman top, Gucci Vault X Dickies pants, ASLAN tie and shoes, See by Chloé arm cuffs and talent’s own socks.