Growing up, I always felt like a nameplate was a rite of passage. If you accomplished something and leveled up a step in your life, you might get this badge of honor, this medal. My earliest memories of nameplates were seeing the girlfriends of my older cousins and the older women in my family wearing them, and me feeling like, “when will it be my turn?”

I’m from Van Nuys, California—it’s the 818, it’s in the Valley. I grew up in an apartment complex that was very Black, Latino, and Asian American, and I think that when you grow up with not very much, you take extra good care of the little things and you show out in a different way, whether it’s through your sneakers or even the way you iron your clothes. You take care of your white T-shirts. That’s how you assert who you are. I always felt a nameplate was a way to show off your fly, to let people know like, “I’m here, this is who I am, this is what I do. Maybe you can or can’t pronounce my name, or maybe this is the only name that you get to know, because this might be a nickname, this might be an aka, but this is the me that I choose to present to the world.” My family is Chicano (Apache, Navajo, Mexican, and white) and I also have nieces who are Filipino, Black, and Latina. Our identities can be really complicated, but the commonalities of the nameplate bring us together. These objects are heirlooms: a precious metal with the most personal thing you have—your name.

On my block of 10 apartment buildings, every single one was packed with families with intergenerational living situations. In our house, sometimes my grandpa was living with us, sometimes my tías were there, too. Everything you imagine LA looked like in the 1990s, my block was just like that. I was in middle school at that time and car shows were popping, but I was still too young to go. I wanted to use Aqua Net and lip liner, but I had to sneak to do it when I was already at school. It was all still very aspirational, but I got to watch through the older sisters of the girls in the building. I have a cousin who is seven years older than me, and all his girlfriends had their hair gelled, their lips lined, their acrylic nails, and their nameplates. Everybody had a nameplate. And if it wasn’t a nameplate necklace, it was a belt, even just with your initial. Every little opportunity you could get to assert, “This is who I am, this is where I’m from, this is what I rep,” you would take it. It was also something shared cross-culturally. On Saticoy, the street where I grew up, we were all from very similar socioeconomic backgrounds, and despite our ethnic and cultural diversity, the styles and aesthetics I’ve described were not perceived as specific to one group. I was lucky to grow up in a family that was also very conscious of the roots of hip-hop, so that legacy informed my perspective, too.

When I started doing shows at circuit tours for Art Laboe and Lowrider magazine, I also had a ring made. I was like, “What if we took a bamboo nameplate earring and added a ring to the back?” because I wanted my name to be visible when I was holding the microphone. And it was still small! I was doing venues with like 10,000 people. Nobody was seeing this little thing! But I wanted to represent, and I wanted to feel connected to home, even when I was traveling through different states and cities. No matter where I was, I was always reminded of the little swap meet that I got her from.

I still have a relationship with the jeweler who did my first nameplate, and my double plate. Almost all of my jewelry is from the same spot. It’s important to know the jeweler and their work—the cuts, the fonts, the details. When you find someone you like, you stick with them. When I was growing up, there were more swap meets. Swap meets were the one place you could get everything—your sneakers, your jewelry, your cellphone, your incense. You could probably get a tattoo, a piercing, airbrushing, colored contact lenses. A lot of the smaller ones don’t exist anymore, so I think people tend to get their jewelry at Slauson or downtown.

To me, the single-plated etched gold pendant is LA’s signature nameplate style. That’s what I initially had. The Old English or Gothic font is also very LA and very Chicago, as Chicago is also very Chicano. That script is synonymous with Chicano aesthetics. In Chicano culture and on the West Coast, we have a subculture around lowriders. If you have a lowrider and you’re in a car club, you have a plaque that sits in the back. The plaques look exactly like a nameplate. I think that if you’re a woman who grew up in or around car culture, your nameplate is your version of a plaque, because cars are often owned by men. They are the men of the family’s heirloom, and a car typically gets passed down to a boy, even if there’s a girl who could receive it. I’ve always wondered about the relationship between plaques, nameplates, and the women who support the culture and who the cars are often named after. The women are usually sitting shotgun. They are the muse for the car. And, just like for a nameplate, you gotta earn your plaque; you don’t just get a lowrider and plaque up. There are a lot of steps to earn that. It’s a big deal to represent who we are and where we are from.

bella-dona.com | @lalaromero