• last year
"I'm your favorite athlete's favorite jeweler." Jewelry expert Leo Khusro reacts to the jewelry worn by today's biggest NFL stars. From Patrick Mahomes diamond tennis chains to Justin Jefferson's "jet" cubans, join him as he critiques the pendants and chains worn by NFL athletes.

Director: Robby Miller
Director of Photography: Brad Wickham
Editor: Graham Mooney & Gerard Zarra
Featuring: Leo Khusro
Producer: Camille Ramos
Line Producer: Jen Santos
Associate Producer: Chris Sechler
Production Manager: James Pipitone
Production Coordinator: Tania Jones
Camera Operator: Anne-Marie Halovanic
Gaffer: David Djaco
Sound Recordist: Tyson Dai
Production Assistant: Ziyne Abdo
Post Production Supervisor: Rachael Knight
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Rob Lombardi
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Transcript
00:00 There's a clip of Justin Jefferson's chain falling off
00:02 in an NFL match.
00:03 He picks it up and he chunks it off the screen.
00:05 I've never seen something like that.
00:06 It's just wild.
00:07 Somebody just threw $70,000 across the field.
00:08 Don't worry, I fixed it.
00:10 [upbeat music]
00:12 What's up GQ?
00:14 I'm Leo Kustro.
00:15 I'm your favorite athlete's favorite jeweler.
00:17 Get ready to step into my world
00:18 as we break down chains and pendants
00:20 worn by the biggest NFL stars.
00:21 [upbeat music]
00:24 Joe Burrow.
00:30 I have good memories and bad memories of this chain.
00:33 I reached out to Nike originally to make this piece
00:35 and they never hit me back.
00:36 And then I made this piece of jewelry for Joe Burrow.
00:39 It blew up on the internet and I got a lawsuit from Nike.
00:42 Nike was like, "Yo, you didn't use our permission
00:45 "to use this piece."
00:46 I'm like, "Yo, I DM'd you right here.
00:47 "Y'all never hit me back."
00:48 That DM saved my whole lawsuit
00:50 and actually got me a partnership with them.
00:53 And we partnered on making this chain
00:55 into an actual t-shirt.
00:56 We had a contract where we made 5,000 shirts,
00:58 sold them in Cincinnati.
01:00 And this piece is just iconic
01:01 because your average quarterback
01:04 doesn't wear jewelry like this.
01:05 There was a famous interview where they were like,
01:07 "Hey, are your diamonds real?"
01:08 And he's like, "Of course they're real."
01:09 I love this piece,
01:10 but the only bad memory I have of this piece
01:12 is if Joe Burrow had won that Super Bowl,
01:13 we were gonna make two million shirts.
01:15 I think you can do the math.
01:17 Will Anderson.
01:19 This is one of my favorite pieces I've ever made.
01:22 Will hit me up and there's a crazy story behind this.
01:24 He wanted to be the Terminator at first.
01:26 Originally, we were gonna take this piece right here.
01:29 Half of his face that I'm covering
01:31 was going to be the Terminator
01:32 and the other half was his face.
01:34 So we took screenshots and headshots of his face.
01:36 We built around this whole portfolio
01:38 and we sent it to him.
01:39 And it looked so lifelike
01:41 that it actually freaked him out.
01:42 He was like, "I don't want my face to look like this."
01:44 And I was like, "Okay, no worries."
01:45 So we sat back to the drawing board
01:47 and I was like, "Hmm, how do we amplify this?"
01:49 If people are not gonna see your face all the time
01:51 'cause you got a helmet on,
01:52 what are they gonna see?
01:53 Either your number or your last name.
01:55 So the number, obviously we couldn't pick
01:56 because you don't know what number
01:58 you're gonna get in the league.
01:59 You're a rookie.
02:00 So we went with Anderson, which is his last name.
02:02 And when his family saw this piece,
02:04 they were in love with it.
02:05 His dad actually cried because he put his name on the piece
02:07 and his dad hadn't even seen it.
02:08 It's one of the most interesting pieces I've worked on
02:10 after the PS2 controller.
02:12 'Cause the PS2 controller was where I was able
02:13 to actually engineer lights inside of a piece.
02:16 It created a whole new opportunity,
02:17 a whole new world for jewelry pieces.
02:19 So it was cool to do this again.
02:20 Sauce Gardner.
02:22 Here we've got Sauce Gardner
02:24 and he's wearing a two-tone white and rose
02:27 sauce bottle pendant.
02:28 He's got two Cubans on there.
02:29 You see there's a 20 millimeter Cuban on the bottom,
02:31 flower set.
02:32 And at the top, he's got a two row prong set,
02:34 14 millimeter Cuban.
02:35 He's got a signature sauce piece that he wears.
02:38 This piece is a little outdated.
02:39 Today he has an emerald cut version of this.
02:41 Still looks sick as fuck.
02:42 I think the jeweler here kind of just made it simple.
02:45 Didn't do too much.
02:46 Kind of just wanted the sauce effect to drip,
02:48 but didn't really like go out of his way
02:50 to make it look like a painting that's just dripping.
02:52 So I think it came out really clean
02:54 and it goes really well with the sauce bottle.
02:55 I actually made that piece.
02:57 The way I designed it was I didn't want a bail
02:59 on the top of the piece.
03:00 I wanted the bail, it's called a hidden bail.
03:02 So you put the bail behind the piece.
03:03 And what happens is when you loop it through the chain,
03:06 it just looks like the piece is standing alone.
03:08 So if you look at the sauce piece he's wearing underneath,
03:10 it's the exact same font.
03:11 He's big on this font in particular.
03:14 And we took the same font, we put it on the bottle.
03:15 He wears number one.
03:17 So in Rose Gold, we put a number one on there.
03:19 And then the top is actually twistable on and off.
03:21 So you can put real sauce in there.
03:23 And if you go to the Buffalo Wild Wings commercial,
03:25 he's like pouring it out.
03:26 It's actually really cool.
03:28 Jordan Addison.
03:29 Jordan Addison's piece is super cool right here.
03:32 Free three.
03:33 What does that mean?
03:33 The guy who's open, he's always open.
03:35 So he's free, you can throw the ball to him.
03:37 Number three, so free three.
03:39 He's got this ninja on top
03:40 because he likes to consider his game ninja-like.
03:43 It's just something that he's big on.
03:45 There are black diamonds on the ninja
03:47 and enamel on the eyes and the face.
03:49 Just to give it more of a pop.
03:51 If you put the diamonds there,
03:52 it's gonna look too close to the other diamonds.
03:54 And then what we did at the bottom is,
03:55 this is a yellow gold 14 carat piece.
03:57 But if you look at the top, it's double layer.
03:59 So there's baguettes all the way on top.
04:00 And then on the bottom, you're surrounded by round diamonds.
04:03 And it creates for a layer.
04:04 The whole set, including the Cuban, went for around 75,000.
04:07 There are certain colors of natural diamonds.
04:09 There's canary yellows.
04:10 You got your white diamonds.
04:10 You got your black diamonds.
04:11 These are natural diamonds from the earth.
04:13 But then you can tint diamonds as well.
04:14 There's a process of tinting.
04:15 It's heating the diamonds.
04:17 So they're artificially heated
04:18 and they can actually change the color
04:20 and make them more translucent.
04:21 So if you want all the black diamonds to be the same color,
04:24 you would tint them.
04:25 Here, they're not all the same color 'cause they're natural.
04:27 So if you hold the piece together,
04:28 there's different shades of black on the piece.
04:30 But if this was synthetic
04:31 or done through an artificial process,
04:34 you would see that they're all the exact same color.
04:36 Patrick Mahomes.
04:38 Mahomes doesn't wear a lot of jewelry.
04:41 Mahomes wears your simple pieces.
04:42 Like pieces that you could wear
04:45 and then if you don't like them in five years,
04:46 you could sell them back and get your money back.
04:48 I love jewelry like this
04:49 'cause this is what jewelry is supposed to be.
04:50 You should invest into a high quality jewelry
04:53 that can give you investment return, like an asset.
04:58 So here he's wearing two assets, which are tennis chains.
05:00 They look like they're about 15, 20 pointer tennis chains.
05:02 They look to me like they're layered.
05:04 So I think one is smaller, one is 20 inches,
05:07 one is 22 inches.
05:08 That's the style.
05:09 You don't wanna wear tennis chains
05:10 and they're all the same length.
05:11 It just looks really ugly.
05:12 And then he's got a white gold prong set,
05:15 two row Cuban on here.
05:16 Just average, regular fit.
05:18 This right here is like a fuck you piece
05:19 because he's got two Madden 99 pieces on here,
05:23 which means he's been in Madden 99 twice.
05:26 He's just flexing on everybody.
05:28 He's got a third one this year
05:29 that he doesn't even have on this photo.
05:31 So when you see that photo, that's like a huge fuck you.
05:34 And then he's got this black diamond tennis chain on here.
05:37 We went over this earlier.
05:38 The black diamonds are more like,
05:40 if they're all the same color, they're synthetic,
05:42 but here they don't look all the same.
05:43 I think these are official.
05:45 And then he's got this black diamond cross piece on there.
05:47 It's really clean.
05:48 Travis Kelce.
05:50 Travis Kelce is obviously the most famous NFL man
05:56 on the planet right now because of Taylor Swift.
05:58 Yeah, I said that.
05:59 Here he's just walking some simple chains.
06:01 These are your like, I'm not too flashy.
06:03 I'm more hip, more style.
06:05 I got the Dior lock chain on.
06:07 That one's smooth.
06:07 It's just your everyday like kind of vibe.
06:09 He looks really good in it.
06:11 I can definitely rock it.
06:12 And you see him wearing it multiple times.
06:13 It goes with every outfit.
06:14 Travis Kelce knows how to put on
06:16 limited accent pieces, but make them look flashy.
06:19 But Travis, if you need anything custom, call me.
06:21 Your custom jewelry game is not there yet, my brother.
06:24 Odell Beckham Jr.
06:26 Odell's one of the flyest dudes when it comes to jewelry.
06:29 Always trying something new.
06:30 Here he's got a Celtic cross at the bottom.
06:32 That's got a little ruby in there.
06:33 The ruby actually matches the red ruby lips
06:35 that's connected to the Gucci links.
06:37 And then on the Gucci links,
06:38 there's prong set round diamond crosses all connected.
06:41 It's a fun piece.
06:42 It's not something you wear every day.
06:43 People will see this multiple times and it's an eye catcher.
06:46 So you want to pull it out every now and then.
06:47 I think it goes perfect with the whole black t-shirt outfit.
06:50 This is again, Jason and Beverly Hills work.
06:52 You can tell right away.
06:53 It's elegant, classy, straight to the point
06:55 on the LA, California, rich vibes.
06:58 These are synthetic pearls put all throughout the chain
07:00 and they're actually different colors.
07:02 With synthetic pearls, they're actually really cool
07:03 because they're cut in half first.
07:05 What you can do is you can actually make one color
07:08 different than the other.
07:10 And then because they're already cut in half,
07:12 they're set into the piece.
07:13 It makes it really cool.
07:14 Makes it really colorful.
07:16 I definitely have a chain I made similar to this.
07:19 Bryce Young wore a piece similar to this.
07:21 They just didn't have as many abstract colors on there,
07:23 but I really like what he did
07:24 and I really like how he put it forward together.
07:27 Justin Jett Jefferson.
07:29 It's the flyest man in the league, straight up.
07:31 Justin Jefferson is killing it.
07:32 And always when he walks out, he's shining.
07:34 On the left side, he's wearing two Cubans.
07:36 He's got two 20 millimeter Cubans.
07:38 It kind of looks for like a layered look.
07:41 We've talked about this multiple times.
07:43 When you're wearing the bigger Cubans,
07:45 you don't have to have like four or five chains
07:47 to make it look like you're wearing a bunch.
07:49 Just two big chains on each other.
07:50 When you're walking into cameras
07:52 or anyone's looking at you from afar,
07:54 it looks like you've got four or five chains layered on you.
07:57 And then he threw on this third chain,
07:58 which is his Jett piece.
07:59 It's the iconic piece we made
08:00 for the first year in the league.
08:01 I think this kind of set his whole tone
08:03 and vibe of the jewelry.
08:05 And ever since we put this piece on his neck,
08:07 it's just been iconic piece after iconic piece.
08:11 And the next one we're working on,
08:12 GQ has an exclusive special to that.
08:14 That's gonna be crazy.
08:16 In the middle, he's got this bead chain.
08:18 Now there's a lot of names for it.
08:19 You call it a ball chain, a sphere chain, a rosary chain.
08:22 I like to call it a bead chain.
08:23 In particular on this one,
08:25 all the gold links on the piece that are spheres
08:28 are all just gold.
08:29 There's no diamonds on them.
08:30 In between those links, there are smaller spheres.
08:33 Those spheres have diamonds on them.
08:35 This look is meant to look like not too flashy,
08:39 but also Justin gets hit a lot in the games.
08:42 And more often than not,
08:43 he's been hit a lot more recently
08:45 'cause he's the best receiver in the league.
08:47 So we try to put things on him
08:48 that are not as heavily flooded with diamonds.
08:51 But then again, it's all down to his vibe.
08:53 If he wakes up in the morning and he says,
08:55 "I'm looking like $5 million on the field,"
08:58 then that's what it is.
08:59 But this is like a calm day.
09:00 The baguette chain underneath, the bead chain on top.
09:03 Over here on the right,
09:04 there's a guy who started a brand.
09:07 I believe it's Polyworld.
09:09 He's getting into a lot of baseball guys,
09:12 trying to put this Van Cleef style of piece together.
09:16 I really like it.
09:16 It's very fascinating.
09:17 He's got the beads on there.
09:19 He's got sphere-shaped pieces on there.
09:20 It's more of a fashion statement piece.
09:22 It goes with all the jewelry.
09:24 I could definitely see this popping off more.
09:26 And I like the vibe.
09:27 And Justin, he put it on the perfect person
09:29 'cause the whole world's gonna see that.
09:32 Anthony Richardson.
09:33 My dog, AR.
09:35 So Anthony Richardson wearing something really cool here.
09:37 Y'all see tennis chains all the time.
09:39 They got pointers on them.
09:40 Now, this is a unique piece
09:41 because we did pointers,
09:42 but we did them on an infinity chain.
09:44 So you have 30 pointers all throughout this infinity chain
09:47 and they smack.
09:48 I designed this logo for him.
09:50 It's an AR.
09:51 Today, he loved it so much, he uses it as his actual logo.
09:55 Now it's part of him for life.
09:56 So him and I share that piece forever.
09:59 Woody Johnson.
10:01 This chain is inspired by Soss Gardner.
10:05 If Soss Gardner was not on this team,
10:07 this team would not be as flat.
10:08 The owner of the Jets liked Soss Gardner's piece so much
10:12 that he actually ended up ordering
10:13 one of the pieces for himself.
10:14 Now he doesn't wear this every day.
10:16 I think this is more for fun.
10:17 When you're the owner of a NFL team,
10:19 you have a boatload of money.
10:21 This set right here looks very expensive.
10:25 It looks like it's about 200,000.
10:27 A fully emeralds on the bails.
10:29 This looks like it has over like 100 carats all the way.
10:32 Jackson Smith Najiba.
10:33 Jackson Smith's going crazy here.
10:36 He told me even the night before the draft,
10:37 he was like, "Leo, I just wanna go dummy."
10:40 I got all these ideas.
10:41 What do you think?
10:42 So if you look right here, it's similar to the same design.
10:46 I got this emerald cut cross bracelet right here.
10:48 It's based off the Chrome Heart design.
10:50 But basically if you can see on his right wrist
10:52 where he's holding his hat,
10:53 he's wearing a similar piece to that.
10:55 And then underneath he's got an evil eye bracelet.
10:57 The evil eye bracelet is two-tone white and rose.
11:00 It's got 70 pointers on every single eye.
11:02 If you're walking around in the sunlight,
11:03 those eyes start winking at you.
11:04 It's actually crazy.
11:05 The JSN is his logo, Jackson Smith Najiba.
11:08 It's a very easy breakdown JSN.
11:09 And he's wearing it with two Cuban chains.
11:11 Simple look to go with the suit.
11:13 And now he can wear them every day
11:14 'cause those are just everyday chains.
11:15 I drew all these up.
11:16 I drew actually 16 drawings for Jackson Smith
11:19 on one piece of paper.
11:20 And this is the one he chose.
11:22 That JSN went for 52,000.
11:23 Isaiah Pacheco.
11:26 My dog Isaiah Pacheco right here, his nickname is Pop.
11:30 He got the Tasmanian devil on top
11:31 because growing up he loved this character.
11:33 It's actually really cool that he likes this character
11:35 'cause the running back is elusive.
11:36 Usually spinning around people.
11:38 And the Tasmanian devil is spinning around all day.
11:41 So it's a really cool vibe for him.
11:42 If you look at this piece, it's 14 karat white gold,
11:45 two-tone, and the background is yellow.
11:47 The pop on the top, there's another layer on top.
11:49 It's in white diamonds.
11:50 And then the tongue, there's rubies on there.
11:52 Red fancy diamonds are actually really expensive
11:54 and very hard to find.
11:55 Putting that together would take this piece
11:57 over a million dollars.
11:58 So we had to get rubies and they look really clean.
12:01 Putting the black enamel on the rubies
12:02 makes the rubies shine harder
12:03 and gives it more of a contrast.
12:05 Make it look like it's his mouth.
12:06 If you look at the top of the piece where the pop is,
12:09 there's actually 0.3 millimeter diamonds all across that.
12:12 So they're a little bigger.
12:13 And then when you get down to the tornado, there's 0.01.
12:16 And what that means is just a size difference,
12:19 but it emphasizes for more of like a paved look
12:21 to make it look more like a tornado.
12:23 If we put bigger stones on the bottom,
12:25 it's not gonna be as thin and it's not gonna look as clean
12:27 'cause there's prongs holding the diamonds.
12:30 So when you make the diamonds as small,
12:31 the prongs are also small and they're not visible.
12:34 (upbeat music)
12:36 I would say today I have a client
12:38 on every team in the league.
12:39 I never pictured it to happen this way.
12:41 It's kind of a blessing.
12:42 I fell into the right lane, met the right people,
12:44 be genuine with genuine people,
12:46 and they'll open up doors for you
12:47 that you'll never have imagined.
12:49 (electronic music)