The belt buckle on the cover and in the video for "SLEEP" was drawn by hand by Christian Azzinaro and made by Polite Worldwide, for the Kid LAROI.
The record
On the cover he leans against a wooden wall in a white tank top and washed blue jeans, a cross on a thin chain at his neck. At the center of the frame, on his belt, two doves open their wings.
The same image went up on a billboard, with his name and the title above him.
The buckle is ours. It was made for him, for this record, before anyone had heard the song. It is in the official video too, clearest at 0:28, on a black belt in the rain.
The drawing
He wanted a bird. Christian drew it by hand: two doves, nestled against each other. That was the one he liked.
Everything after the drawing follows the path a custom pendant takes. The drawing became a model on screen, where the feathers were worked in row by row. The model became a casting. The doves came out as two separate birds, rough from the metal, and went to the bench.
At the bench
Look closely and the work is in the contrast. The bodies are polished smooth. The wings and tails keep every feather, long ones at the tips, short overlapping ones toward the body, so the light moves differently across each part. When the belt is closed, the two birds meet beak to beak.
Turn it over and the name is there, engraved across the back of one tail: Polite Worldwide.
Why a belt
The idea is older than the record. About two years earlier, Christian made the first Polite buckle, in solid silver with enamel inside and detail along its sides.
Then the clothes caught up. Shirts got shorter and thinner, and the belt came back into view. The space at the waist became one more place to wear something chosen on purpose, and a buckle became a piece of jewelry in its own right.
A buckle starts with a person and a drawing, and it is made to be looked at from close up.
People have been asking about this one since the cover went up.
"SLEEP" by the Kid LAROI. Watch the official video.
