For Gen Z, Tough Guys Wear Rings—Lots of Them
Terrence McDermott barely has a finger to spare. Each day, the 26-year-old cigar shop assistant manager in Phoenix plops silver rings onto nine of his 10 fingers. His clinky assortment includes a turquoise signet, a ring inspired by late rapper MF Doom and a pinkie ring that he tried on and couldn’t pry off, so he bought it.
He’s not yet married, so his sole free digit is his left ring finger. The rings, he said, “are just a part of me." McDermott’s southwestern surroundings, where turquoise jewelry is as abundant as adobe homes, influenced his ring collecting. But so did, he said, men’s fashion YouTubers like Sangiev Sriskumar and Magnus Ronning.
Watching their videos a few years ago, as these bloggers chattered about track pants or chunky boots, McDermott picked up on the sound of rings clicking together on their hands. “I was like, ‘That sounds kind of cool,’ and then I started experimenting more with more rings." The ring guy has become a stock character in Gen Z and millennial men’s fashion corridors of the internet in recent years. You can find him on TikTok in pithy “get ready with me" (GRWM) videos, flaunting a bounty of quarter-sized silver rings like a Vegas-era Elvis.
He’s there on Instagram, posting selfies with enough silver on his hands to set off a metal detector. This hard-edged look clangs against the tidal wave of genteel trends that have lately swept across the men’s fashion universe. The decade’s dominant narrative is that men’s fashion has fully embraced its feminine side: Lace shirts, lithe loafers, crop tops and pearl necklaces have ballooned into trickle-down fads.
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