Gen Z may not be having sex, but they are wearing it.
As his generation’s preeminent glam-rock edgelord, the 21-year-old musician Sombr took it upon himself to restore raunch to the MTV VMAs red carpet (a once-fertile ground for out-there fashion) on Sunday night, arriving in a skeezy faux-skunk coat, a pile of necklaces across his bare chest, copious eyeliner, and flared leather trousers held up with a crystal-studded “SEX” belt buckle.
According to the ensemble’s designer, ERL’s Eli Russell Linnetz, the unsubtle accessory was the musician’s idea.
“The ‘SEX’ buckle concept came from Sombr,” said Linnetz in an email on Monday. The musician had originally been slated to wear an ERL logo buckle, “but the day before the VMAs, he came to us with the idea that it should say ‘SEX’ instead. We had less than 24 hours to make it happen.”
To fulfill the request, the designer, who previously created a one-of-one buckle that Kendrick Lamar wore on his GNX album cover, pulled from his personal archive of crystals and antique pins to craft the buckle at the label’s atelier in Venice Beach, not too far from where the VMAs would be taking place in downtown Los Angeles. Working with stylist Jake Sammis, the musician—who typically adopts the 1970s as his sartorial muse—and Linnetz envisioned rock god Billy Idol as the primary inspiration for the look. “There’s something about Billy’s style that feels rebellious, glamorous, slightly dirty (and very LA),” said Linnetz.
But perhaps even more fittingly, Sombr (whose legal name is Shane Michael Boose) kept the “SEX” belt buckle on for his onstage cameo during Madonna and Charli XCX’s show-opening performance—an appropriate nod to the former’s infamous 1992 coffee table book of the same name.
Later on during the broadcast, the musician nixed the edgy belt for his on-air performance, a multi-artist tribute to the late pop superstar George Michael. In addition to his ERL lace-up leather trousers and skate chains designed by jeweler Tom Binns (who happens to live next door to Linnetz in Venice Beach), he wore Michael’s own studded leather jacket.
Per Linnetz, both looks were meant “to feel unapologetic, larger than life, and distinctly Sombr.”
