A legend in the custom jewelry world, King Baby has long been a go-to for edgy and exciting pieces. From its tristate HQ, a stunning showroom in Red Bank, the brand continues to crank that rule-breaking attitude up to eleven.

BY EMMA FLOYD · PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX BARRETO

Ray Chaparro was already a devoted King Baby customer when a conversation with the company planted the idea of bringing the brand to New Jersey. This was, it turns out, the right idea: Chaparro, noted jewelry lover, retired law enforcement officer and founder of a luxury transportation company, Chap’s Services, eventually opened the brand’s Red Bank flagship together with his wife Ruthie. Working with founder Mitchell Binder, they’ve turned Chaparro’s affinity for this jewelry into one of Red Bank’s most exciting new showrooms.

Long before King Baby arrived on Broad Street, its story began nearly 3,000 miles away, on another coast and in another time: 1970s Los Angeles, with its motorcycles, music and counterculture.

Founder and designer Mitchell Binder was a teenager when he moved with his mother from Jackson, Mississippi, to Los Angeles. For a teen, the timing couldn’t have been better: Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead supplied the soundtrack to a city where rock and roll, custom cars, motorcycles and an evolving California counterculture were becoming intertwined. At 15, Binder became a jeweler’s apprentice and soon began designing pieces of his own.

Those early experiences would eventually provide the vocabulary for King Baby, the jewelry company Binder officially launched in 2000. Heavy sterling silver, leather, precious stones, and recurring motifs, including skulls, crosses, roses, wings, daggers, and lions, became signatures. The influences were similarly recognizable: rock and roll, motorcycle culture, the American West, and the custom culture Binder encountered in California.

“The designs are primarily inspired by founder and designer Mitchell Binder’s personal life experience,” the King Baby team said. “His life’s journey has definitely been inspired by all aspects of Americana, from rock and roll and motorcycle culture to the California custom lifestyle.”

Binder’s connection to those worlds predates the company itself. Before establishing King Baby, he sold handmade turquoise jewelry in Westwood and developed a clientele that spanned Hollywood and the music industry. Over the years, his custom work has included pieces for Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, and Elizabeth Taylor. The brand’s relationship with music later became more literal through a collaboration with Fender, which translated elements of the guitar maker’s history into sterling-silver picks, microphones, instruments, and other music-derived forms.

Yet behind the recognizable imagery is a process that King Baby considers fundamental to its identity. The jewelry continues to be made in the United States, with work coming out of the company’s Santa Monica workshop.

“Craftsmanship is our primary focus,” the King Baby team said. “Pretty much everything else comes second to that.”

That emphasis helps explain the physical weight and construction of the pieces. King Baby has continued to employ traditional jewelry-making processes, including lost-wax casting, while working predominantly in sterling silver alongside materials such as leather and stone. Rather than treating the skull, wing, or cross as a passing motif, Binder has repeatedly returned to them, altering proportion, finish, and detail over time. Some designs have remained in the collection since the company’s earliest years.

“Every piece that we sell has an element of our brand,” the King Baby team said. “Some of our core items have been in the collection since day one, and Mitchell has enough designs in his workbook to last a lifetime.”

In September 2025, that archive found a new East Coast address when King Baby opened at 17 Broad Street in downtown Red Bank. The location occupies the former Coco Parì storefront and joins the brand’s deliberately manicured American retail presence, which also includes stores in Santa Monica, Las Vegas and New Hope, Pennsylvania.

For the Chaparros, Red Bank offered something compatible with a company built around the fusion of old-school craft and forward-looking attitude.

Inside the showroom, the brand’s signature look extends beyond what sits under the glass. Custom-built showcases share the space with a motorcycle, tying the retail environment back to the culture that has informed Binder’s work for decades. It’s not decoration; it’s the continuation of a story.

More than 25 years after King Baby was formally established, its central vocabulary has changed less than the world surrounding it. The company still trades in many of the objects and symbols that shaped Binder in Los Angeles decades ago. Still, it produces its jewelry in Santa Monica rather than divorcing design from fabrication.
That consistency is encapsulated in a phrase King Baby has used for years: “For the Chosen Few.” This is a company that has never attempted to make its jewelry anonymous.

The Chaparros, as studio owners, now join that chosen few. In Red Bank, under their leadership, the skulls, silver, motorcycles, and craftsmanship remain recognizable, carrying a distinctly California-born identity to a new address on the East Coast.

King Baby Red Bank — 17 Broad Street, Red Bank / 732-219-5464 / kingbabystudio.com