Points of View

This Is Who I Am

Chicana musician and fashion label founder LaLa Romero on the power of nameplate jewelry.

By LaLa Romero
March 3, 2024

Spring 2024

Essays

Free To Read

Photo by Brandon Moningka

LaLa Romero purchased these custom “LaLa” bamboo hoop earrings at the Slauson swap meet while in high school.

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.

Photo by Brandon Moningka

LaLa Romero wears her favorite nameplate necklace and chunky gold hoops on the Joshua Tree, California, set of the music video for her 2017 song “Who’s Playing Who?”

“These objects are heirlooms: a precious metal with the most personal thing you have—your name.”

— LaLa Romero

The first nameplate I ever got—not my current one, but my starter one—I had to buy for myself. I always worked, even in high school. Big up to Macy’s that gave me a job while I was still in tenth and eleventh grade. At first I could only afford the pendant, and I had to wait to get the chain. Luckily, you could do layaway at the swap meets, so you’d lock in what you were going to get and then make your payments on it.

When I first started doing music and got my publishing deal, I was like, “What am I gonna buy myself?” And it wasn’t even that kind of money, but every rapper gets a chain, so I wanted to level up my nameplate. I got my pave double-plated pendant and it cost like five hundred bucks—that’s still a lot of money! It was a big deal for me. The fact that I was able to do that for myself, to treat myself, was very significant. When you have to work to earn something, you treat it very differently than if it was gifted.

Growing up, I didn’t have a quinceañera, which was how a lot of girls got jewelry when they turned 15. I associated nameplates with coming-of-age events and religious ceremonies, especially in a Latina’s life. A lot of babies get their first little gold bracelet with their name on it when they’re baptized, or for their first Communion, then their confirmation or quinceañera. When I notice that someone close to me doesn’t have a nameplate, often I will get them one for a birthday or something like that. It feels very special to be part of the moment when someone receives a nameplate. Even if you don’t wear it, even if you hang it on your mirror in your bedroom, you just gotta have it.

Photo by Brandon Moningka

Romero purchased her gold nameplate necklace at the Slauson Super Mall swap meet in South Los Angeles after receiving a publishing deal.

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 had another nameplate, too, because for music my handle for everything was LASadGirl@hotmail.com. My LASadgirl nameplate was huge, and it was gorgeous. But then I decided to do a giveaway for fans, and my management at the time was like, “Oh, you should give away the chain” because girls would always ask me about it. To this day, I still regret doing that giveaway. If I post on Instagram, “Who won that nameplate?” I might be able to find her, even though this happened close to 15 years ago.

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.

Photo by Brandon Moningka

On a table in Romero’s home office: her gold nameplate, custom bamboo gold hoops, and custom bamboo ring—all with the name “LaLa.” Her company Bella Doña makes the “Babygirl” bamboo hoop rug on the floor.

LaLa Romero is a musician, actor, and cofounder of Bella Doña, a clothing and accessories brand with roots in Chicano and LA culture. She lives in Los Angeles. This essay is an excerpt from The Nameplate: Jewelry, Culture, and Identity by Marcel Rosa-Salas and Isabel Attyah Flower. Copyright 2023 by Marcel Rosa-Salas and Isabel Attyah Flower. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Visit LaLa Romero and her fashion label online.

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