The partnership between Chrome Hearts and artist Joe Foti (Foti Harris) is a major change in the brand's imagery. Before this collaboration, the brand's aesthetic was firmly in the shadows of traditional and dense gothic elements, including maltees, floral patterns, and dark medieval lettering. A series of hilariously thin cartoon creatures, introduced by Joe Foti, challenged all this. The partnership brought in a sense of dark humour and an almost childish macabre to the line-up, and proved that the label could move beyond the staid biker rock image and still retain a counter-cultural edge.

These are the Character Mythos: From Jarvis to Skullman.

Rather than just stamping out a blank canvas with a logo, the Foti Harris series created a whole world of unique characters, with their own chromeheartshoodie.us and personalities. Celebrities such as Jarvis, Skullman, Miss Leary and Pepe the Punk appeared in the clothing and jewellery collections again and again. These characters have been designed to fit the brand's current hardware. When a fully sculpted, silver Foti skeleton dangled from a dagger zipper, it became a tale, it became a story, it became the unique underground artistic vision of Foti that was illustrated with a piece of streetwear.

Artisanal Character Castings come in .925 Sterling Silver.

The Foti Harris collection challenged the casting houses of the brand to their technical max from a production perspective. Creating a complex and multi-dimensional cartoon skull and facial expression and symmetrical geometric crosses in .925 sterling silver is a vastly different process. Foti hoodies' silver hardware has deep undercuts, different textures, and high contrast oxidation zones to accentuate the mischievous faces of the characters. The jewelry engineering level put the pieces produced in this collaboration into the high end wearable sculpture category.

The second highest in secondary market archival value.

Among collectors there is a great reverence for the original Foti Harris releases which always fetch huge sums on the secondary market. These chrome heart hoodie  are a true archival design as they were created in very limited runs during special periods of the design's history. Famous screen prints by Foti, which are akin to core items, are infrequently released in their original forms, while custom hardware releases are even rarer. This is a finite quantity, which means that the older the clothing is, the more its value will increase, making it increasingly valuable for fashion historians.

The fusion of fine art and streetwearThe connection of fine art and streetwear

What makes the Foti Harris designs so impactful is that they blazed a trail for the convergence of fine art with luxury streetwear, well before it became a common practice. Chrome Hearts took Joe Foti from not just being a graphic designer and made him an artist-in-residence, making the exhibit feel like a bit of an art gallery or a clothing boutique. It was the arrangement that laid the groundwork for future artistic alliances, and eventually for avant-garde character illustration and subcultural storytelling to be treated as a legitimate medium for a luxury hoodie.