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The country artist known simply as Ernest is a couple of cocktails deep on a recent afternoon in the rooftop garden of West Hollywood's Soho House, a diamond pendant the size of a AA battery nestled within the open neck of his blue Western shirt. The pendant, which reads DANGEROUS, is one of three matching pieces he commissioned from a jeweler in Orange County, Calif. -- one for Ernest, one for Hardy, one for Morgan Wallen -- as a memento of the trio's time writing songs together for Wallen's six-times-platinum "Dangerous: The Double Album.

" The Western shirt, meanwhile, reflects Ernest's love of Ralph Lauren. The designer's career in fashion, as depicted in the 2019 documentary "Very Ralph," "changed my life," Ernest says. "Seriously.



I watched it three or four years ago and shortly after cleaned out my closet and started shopping Double RL." Ernest's mood board for the cover of his new album, "Nashville, Tennessee," contained a picture of Lauren leaning against a barn with an American flag in the background. "We shot the cover in my barn," he says of himself and his wife, Delaney Royer, who handles Ernest's visual content.

"But we made the mood board before we even bought our farm." INDULGE HIS PASSION The rare Nashville native in country music, Ernest, 32, has always been interested in clothes, even if he lacked the wherewithal to indulge his passion. "High school was Sperrys, khakis and a school polo," he says.

Now, though -- thanks to No. 1 country hits he's penned for S.

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