October 16, 2026 · 9 min read
Marking ComplexCon’s 10th anniversary in Los Angeles, this milestone also kicked off APORRO’s countdown to its 10-year chapter. Featuring one-of-one custom pieces crafted for Vandy the Pink and Amber Rose, alongside an exclusive GODSTAR collaboration with Alice Hollywood, APORRO brought craftsmanship, creative expression, and new stories to the show.
APORRO X Alice Hollywood: Where Punk Meets Street Jewelry
One of the weekend's key highlights was the APORRO X Alice Hollywood collaboration. Founded by designer Shane Gonzales, the Los Angeles-based label Alice Hollywood is known for a rebellious, punk-influenced aesthetic and a design language that treats clothing and accessories as expressions of individual character.
That perspective meets APORRO's interest in turning recognizable cultural references into carefully constructed jewelry. Rather than reproducing familiar symbols without context, the collaboration takes Alice Hollywood's GODSTAR identity and interprets it through material, scale, hardware, and precise detailing.
The partnership introduced two distinct pieces at ComplexCon: the APORRO X ALICE HOLLYWOOD GODSTAR LIGHTER LEASH and the APORRO X ALICE HOLLYWOOD GODSTAR SPOON NECKLACE. Both draw on the visual attitude of punk culture, but each approaches the relationship between jewelry and everyday objects in a different way.
The GODSTAR collaboration also created a reason for people to stop, examine the details, and engage with the objects up close. Among those who visited the booth were the Clermont Twins, who took a closer look at the Lighter Leash. Those encounters brought the collaboration into the wider mix of fashion and culture surrounding ComplexCon.
The GODSTAR Pieces: Two Designs, One Creative Language
APORRO X ALICE HOLLYWOOD GODSTAR LIGHTER LEASH
The GODSTAR Lighter Leash transforms an everyday lighter accessory into a piece of wearable hardware. With its spiked exterior, GODSTAR-inspired details, chain, and clip-based construction, the design combines Alice Hollywood's punk sensibility with a practical form intended to secure a compatible lighter.
The contrast is what makes the piece distinctive. A familiar utilitarian object becomes a deliberate part of an outfit; sharp-edged detailing meets an accessory designed to move with the wearer. It feels at home alongside streetwear, but it also stands on its own as a small statement of personal style.
Shop the GODSTAR Lighter Leash
APORRO X ALICE HOLLYWOOD GODSTAR SPOON NECKLACE
The GODSTAR Spoon Necklace takes a different approach. A miniature spoon, the GODSTAR visual identity, and stone-set details come together in a necklace that plays with expectations of what a pendant should look like.
Its appeal lies in the tension between an ordinary object and considered jewelry construction. The spoon form introduces a subversive, almost found-object quality, while the metalwork and careful setting give the design the finish and presence of a collectible piece. It's an accessory that invites a second look, not because it follows convention, but because it deliberately moves away from it.
Discover the GODSTAR Spoon Necklace
Together, these releases represent more than a limited drop. They express a shared creative position: jewelry does not have to rely on traditional forms to feel considered. An unexpected object can carry the same intention, detail, and identity as a classic chain or pendant.
Vandy the Pink: A One-of-One Burger With Layers of Surprises
Custom jewelry has long been part of APORRO's creative practice. At ComplexCon 2026, that work took on an especially playful form through a one-of-one piece created for Vandy the Pink Custom Jewelry.
Vandy has built a recognizable design world by transforming everyday food imagery into character-driven streetwear. His signature burger is more than a graphic; it is a visual symbol of the humor, imagination, and individuality associated with his work. APORRO's challenge was to translate that identity into jewelry without losing what makes it entertaining in the first place.
From the outside, the finished piece resembles a sculptural, stone-covered burger. Its dimensional construction and extensive stone setting bring the familiar character into a new medium. Yet the exterior is only the first part of the design. The real idea is revealed when the piece opens.
Much like a Russian nesting doll, the burger can be opened layer by layer, with each stage revealing something smaller and more unexpected inside. The first opening exposes a miniature fries-inspired piece. Open that component, and individual fries and a tiny ketchup-bottle pendant emerge. Even the ketchup bottle contains a final hidden detail: it can be opened to release small red stones, echoing the color of ketchup.
It's a sequence of reveals designed to reward curiosity. The burger is not simply a pendant shaped like a favorite character; it is an interactive miniature world. Each opening introduces another joke, another carefully made object, and another reason to look closer. The playful concept depends on serious execution—from the sculptural shell to the precision required for the smaller internal components and their openings.
That execution is measurable. The finished piece weighs roughly 755 grams and carries approximately 14,683 stones totaling about 276 carats, all of it built over more than 400 hours of work. Every layer needed its own hinge, its own tolerance, and its own setting work, because each internal component had to stay structurally independent while still nesting inside the one above it. The engineering, rather than the decoration, is what lets the burger function as jewelry instead of a model. A project at this level can be commissioned: the subject and symbolism change with each client, while the layered construction method carries over.
Toward the end of ComplexCon, Vandy visited APORRO's booth and received the finished creation in person. That handover completed the story: a familiar part of his creative identity had been turned into something physical, personal, and entirely his own.
For APORRO, this is what custom jewelry can achieve at its best. It allows a designer's imagination to determine the form of the piece, while the craft makes even the smallest surprises possible.
Your Vision. Our Craftsmanship.
Not every custom piece starts with a conventional jewelry reference. Some begin with a character, a personal symbol, a memory, a logo, or an idea that has never existed as a physical object. The process is about understanding what that image means to its owner and finding the right materials, proportions, details, and construction to express it.
From the initial concept to the finished piece, APORRO approaches custom work as a collaboration between the person with the idea and the makers bringing it into form. Vandy's burger shows how far that collaboration can go when the design itself calls for a surprise inside a surprise.
Your vision. Our craftsmanship.
Amber Rose: A Custom Jewelry Story One Year in the Making
Some pieces take a year. This one did — a one-of-one character pendant built around Amber Rose's likeness, started as a birthday gift in 2025 and finished for a handoff that ended up happening in person at ComplexCon. Nobody scripted it. She walked past the booth, spotted herself in the case, and that was that.
Custom jewelry is often described through materials, setting, and technique. Those details matter, but this encounter captured something else: a one-of-one piece can also hold the memory of why it was created, who it was created for, and the circumstances in which it finally changes hands. It is the same reason custom photo pendants stay personal long after the occasion that prompted them.
Snow Tha Product, Ben Baller & More: Street Culture Comes Together
Throughout the weekend, APORRO's booth became a meeting point for personalities working across music, fashion, jewelry, and entertainment. Their visits created a different kind of exchange from a traditional product presentation: people could handle the pieces, discuss the ideas behind them, and see how different objects worked with their own style.
Rapper Snow Tha Product stopped by while livestreaming, sharing her visit with her audience as she explored APORRO's selection in person — a practical lesson in building a jewelry rotation rather than buying a single statement piece. During the visit, she chose a wallet chain and a pair of iced-out conceptual headphones known as “Mute the World.”
Despite their recognizable headphone shape, “Mute the World” is not functional audio equipment. The design is a jewelry statement built around a feeling: sometimes you want to quiet the outside world, step away from other people's expectations, and stay entirely in your own space. You don't want to explain yourself. You don't want to talk. You simply want to be left in your own world.
That idea turns the headphone silhouette into something more expressive than an audio accessory. It's not about what you hear. It's about what you choose to tune out. Seen alongside a performer who has built a voice and audience of her own, the piece becomes a fitting reminder that personal style can communicate a mood without saying a word.
Celebrity jeweler Ben Baller, rapper Trinidad James, and Blac Chyna also visited APORRO's booth during ComplexCon. Each came from a different creative space, yet their presence reflected the same larger point: jewelry moves between music, fashion, design, and personal image. It is worn in different ways by different people, while still carrying unmistakable cultural meaning.
These interactions were valuable not simply because recognizable names appeared at the booth. They showed how a jewelry brand can participate in conversations already taking place across communities, rather than standing apart from them.
APORRO X Boo Johnson & APORRO X COZY RAF: Collaborations Beyond the Drop
ComplexCon is known for exclusives and limited releases, but some of the strongest partnerships are the ones that continue after the first launch. APORRO used the weekend to reconnect with collaborators whose projects have already become part of its broader creative story.
Previously released work from APORRO X Boo Johnson and APORRO X COZY RAF was featured at the booth. Both collaborators returned during the weekend, creating a chance to revisit the pieces and the relationships behind them in person.
With professional skateboarder Boo Johnson, the collaboration speaks to a world where style is shaped as much by movement, community, and everyday wear as by fashion itself. In APORRO X COZY RAF, another independent creative perspective enters the design process, making the resulting objects feel connected to the collaborator's own cultural space rather than to a generic celebrity endorsement.
That difference is important. A collaboration should not end when the release calendar moves on. Its strongest value comes from a recognizable shared point of view and a continuing relationship between the brand, the collaborator, and the people who connect with the work.
Whether the starting point is skateboarding, music, or a distinctive personal aesthetic, the goal remains the same: to make jewelry that feels connected to the person and culture that inspired it.
More Than Jewelry: APORRO's Connection to Street Culture
ComplexCon 2026 brought several of APORRO's creative interests into one space. Alice Hollywood brought an unapologetic punk perspective to two wearable GODSTAR objects. Vandy the Pink turned a familiar burger character into a mechanically layered custom creation. Amber Rose's gift carried a personal story that took a year to complete. Snow Tha Product's visit brought the idea behind “Mute the World” into the conversation, while artists, designers, and collaborators across the weekend added their own perspectives.
None of these stories looks exactly like the next. That is the point. Street culture is not one uniform look or one fixed group of people. It is a continuing exchange between communities, shaped by music, fashion, art, skating, design, and the choices individuals make about how they present themselves.
Jewelry has a place in that exchange because it can be deeply personal. A chain can become part of someone's everyday uniform — which is why choosing the right chain length matters more than most people expect. An unconventional accessory can express a mood. A one-of-one piece can preserve an inside joke, a creative signature, or a meaningful memory in a form that lasts.
As APORRO approaches its tenth anniversary in August 2027, we remain focused on the same question that has guided the work since 2017: how can craft help people make their individual stories visible?
We were honored to be part of ComplexCon 2026 alongside some of the most influential names in global street culture — Nike, Fear of God, BAPE, Gallery Dept., Palm Angels, and Fragment Design, as well as Sp5der, HELLSTAR, and Playboi Carti, and the designers closest to our own story, Alice Hollywood and Vandy the Pink. One presence stood out across the entire weekend: North West. At just 13 years old, Kanye West's daughter has become a creative force of her own generation — and seeing her name alongside legacy brands is exactly what ComplexCon represents: the future of street culture, happening now.
Different cultures. Different stories. One shared language of self-expression.
APORRO — Signature Street Luxury.
Explore APORRO
Discover APORRO X Alice Hollywood
Explore the GODSTAR collaboration, where punk-inspired forms and carefully constructed details meet wearable objects with a distinct point of view.
GODSTAR lighter leash · GODSTAR spoon necklace
Discover APORRO X COZY RAF
Explore the COZY collaboration, where darkened oxidized metal and customizable finishes meet everyday accessories shaped by your own hands.
Explore APORRO Custom Hip Hop Jewelry
Turn a personal reference, a memory, or a design idea into a one-of-one piece shaped around your own story.
Discover APORRO Streetwear Jewelry
Explore chains, pendants, bracelets, earrings, semi-custom and statement accessories created for individual expression, and see how to layer necklaces for men for a finished look.
Related Stories
Continue exploring APORRO's approach to collaboration, craftsmanship, and custom design through more stories from our journal about Street Luxury Jewelry.
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