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“The city is a big fucking mess in a way that makes me feel turned on creatively every single day,” says Johnny Valentine, a New York City chainsmith, SoHo loft dweller, and sidewalk head-turner.
Their desk, it seems, is no different. Valentine laughs as they watch my eyes widen as I scan the gleaming, silvered junkyard. Scissors, reading glasses, metal polisher, and a bottle of Advil are nestled in the thick layer of tangled hardware. Metal rings, the size of various coins, sit delicately in scattered dishes. Two desk lamps, one on either end, point inwards like football stadium lights.
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Like the workspace of any artist, there’s a methodical touch to its chaos. “It’s crazy, but I know where everything is,” they say. Valentine pulls open an oak drawer where 20 silver chains lie on a flattened bandana in neat rows, polished and twinkling.
Valentine’s chains are chunky, yet delicate — punk and elegant. They embody the ‘70s and ’80s industrial street style of the Ramones’ New York City, while remaining a timeless staple of punk fashion. More than that, they are crafted with extreme care and thoughtfulness for the people taking them home.
“I don’t really travel past my four-block radius,” says Valentine. “So it’s so cool that I get to make something and then send it off with someone.” On any given night, Valentine’s chains might be sparkling on the red carpet or thumping on the chests of rockers on stage.
Most of their business is from word of mouth: neighbors, friends, and artists who have spotted Valentine’s hypnotic chains in the wild. The chains are almost always on tour, whether it’s with Nile Rodgers, Surfbort’s frontman Dani Miller, Paramore’s touring drummer Joey Mullen, or The Go-Go’s drummer, Gina Schock. Nile Rodgers’ chain even made it to the Queen’s jubilee where he performed with Duran Duran, grooving on a white Stratocaster in an ivory suit.
Valentine calls their chains, “armor,” metal adornments that protect and reinforce one’s sense of identity when walking out into the world. When Valentine steps out into the world of West Broadway, there’s a jovial clinking that follows, layered chains jingling against each other like wind chimes.
“Jewelry makes me feel cool and empowered,” Valentine says, pushing the brim of their leather biker’s hat up slightly, exposing their hot pink eyebrows. Valentine wears a turquoise bandana around their neck and cobalt cargo work pants. Their jet black hair is kept in two neat braids that graze their belt. Tattoos poke out of their AC/DC band tee, dancing down their arms all the way to their fingertips.
“I want everybody to feel tough and cool, but with a softness and sweetness,” says Valentine. The contradictions welded in the chains come from an innate tension within Valentine. Identifying as non-binary, they cherish the dual spirits of, what they describe as, “tough and tender.” Their craftsmanship is propelled by the same tenants of the harmony found in opposition.
New York City is the inspiration, primary motivator, and the beloved backdrop to Valentine’s career as an artist. Influenced by both the tangible and intangible parts of the city, Valentine recreates urban life in their chains. “Some industrial aspects of the city can inspire that in a very literal way. Like the way a trash can is chained to the pole,” Valentine says. “And then there’s also the softer influences, like seeing a film and wanting to express the feeling of that.”
Valentine is a serial movie-goer. “I see a movie in the theater every single week,” Valentine tells me, explaining that in their apartment there are no computers (they only recently installed Wi-Fi). “Whatever I’ve been watching that week influences my chains.” They’re currently on a Midnight Cowboy kick, as seen in the Western neckerchief they’re sporting today. “I came home devastated from the movie and immediately just started making stuff to process it,” they say.
Many of Valentine’s references and poignant cultural milestones are set in the romantic dreamscape of cinema. Growing up in Hannibal, Missouri — the sleepy, Americana town where many of the Tom Sawyer books took place — movies, books, and music were the main source of aesthetic and creative fantasy.
Particularly in regard to style, movies contained a portal into the world of punk fashion. Pretty in Pink’s iconic hodgepodge working-class styling was pivotal in teaching Valentine that dressing well didn’t depend on wealth. “I was obsessed with Duckie and Iona’s style,” Valentine says. “You could make pieces to create your own special style which started me on making things and altering thrift store finds.”
The DIY, punk ethos of détourning vintage aesthetics spoke to Valentine’s budding identity. “I was so inspired by the New York punks!” Dead Boys, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Johnny Thunders, Ramones, and Blondie were Valentine’s fashion icons.
“Everything I read takes place in New York in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s,” they explain. “I’m drawn to art that is based on the New York that I thought I was moving to. But when I moved here, it wasn’t like that anymore.”
When Valentine moved to New York in 2007, they searched for the bustling beatnik community they had seen in the movies. Valentine began working as a hairstylist at Mudhoney, a salon and punk institution opened in 1989 by Michael Matula. He was doing everyone’s hair in the ‘90s: L7, Hole, Metallica, Kurt Cobain, Smashing Pumpkins, Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, Megadeth, Radiohead. “Mudhoney was like school for scoundrels,” Valentine explains. “The perfect place to learn about everything cool. Music books, film, clothes, hair, makeup.”
“I’ve definitely fucked around with my appearance a lot. And as a hairstylist, I’ve had every type of hair,” says Valentine. But they weren’t always as unabashed and experimental with their style. “I was a late bloomer in every sense of the word. It took me a while to not be so anxious that I could actually figure out who I am,” they explain.
After graduating high school, Valentine moved ten minutes south of the Las Vegas strip, next to the Liberace museum. They quickly became obsessed with the ornate, flamboyant style of the pianist, frequenting the museum as their house of worship. Valentine resonated with the contradictions of Liberace’s self-expression: the tensions between masculinity and femininity and the marriage of maximalism and traditional. “His personal style and self-expression blew my mind,” says Valentine. “That’s when I got into jewelry and wearing rings on every single finger.”
Over the pandemic, Valentine was able to focus more on their metalsmithing, eventually quitting Mudhoney to focus on their jewelry business full-time. “A phrase that often pops into my head is Liberace’s quote: ‘too much of a good thing is wonderful.’ I repeat that in my head when I’m getting dressed or making a new chain,” Valentine says.
Now, Valentine rents the back-facing unit of a pre-war building on West Broadway. They hold two charcoal-colored poodles, Liberace and Ramona, in each arm as they walk me through their sunny loft. Thick wood beams stretch across the ceiling’s skylight, and Persian rugs and large-scale oil paintings fill the echoing space. Pat Kaufman, a 94-year-old painter, bought the entire floor back in the ‘80s when SoHo was less luxury boutiques and brunch spots, and more galleries and artist lofts. As Kaufman heads to Florida for the colder months, she’s thankful that she’s able to rent the spot to someone who is able to enjoy the Bohemian culture that remains in the building. Almost all of the tenants, who are mostly painters and sculptors, bought whole floors in the ‘70s when the apartments were desolate spaces.
“The fact that people in this building are still making art every single day and being able to talk to each other about what they’re making, what I’m making, feels like the New York that I dreamed of as a teenager,” Valentine says. “Like when I watched fucking Party Girl when I was young and felt like, Oh my God, I wish I lived in a loft and had neighbors who were doing cool stuff.”
“I certainly have my neighborhood people that are so cool and I’m happy to see every day and talk to them about what they’re doing and making,” says Valentine. “But there’s also a hundred people waiting for brunch next door at Sadelle’s, asking if they can borrow my dogs to take a photo for Instagram.”
Valentine has cultivated the spirit of the city in the rugged chains that adorn downtown’s coolest denizens. “I feel like I have a piece of old New York,” Valentine says. “And that feels really fucking good.”
