Live In Color

Gone are the days of concert venues and festivals being dark and dreary with alternative, punk and rock shows being filled with young crowds in black tee-shirts. A new burst of color has been added to the music scene and is making festivals like Bamboozle and Warped Tour bright and shiny. Twenty-three year old Mark Capicotto is the man behind these intensely-hued designs who got these music listeners to taste the rainbow."I wanted to do something completely different, bring a whole new element of color and vibrance to the style of music and the culture of it," says Capicotto about the idea behind his clothing brand. "I wanted to do the opposite from whatever brands were out then."

In 2005, Capicotto was a college student in upstate New York with a passion for graphic design, but wasn't too sure what career he wanted to pursue. He was doing freelance T-shirt designs for several bands and companies and then began creating some original designs for himself.

"It was just something that kind of made sense for me to do myself," says Capicotto about creating his own designs and line. "And it just started out as something that I was like kind of half-serious with while I was going to school, and it ended up being a full-time thing."

That full-time thing actually turned into Glamour Kills, a colorful line of T-shirts sold in an online store and fully operated out of Capicotto's parents' basement. Because of his passion for music and previous involvement in designing for bands, Capicotto began attending local shows in the Hudson Valley area and merging his designs and brand with music culture.

"I grew up listening to all these bands in the scene and you know music's like such a huge part of my life that it just kind of made sense that we were a part of that," explains Capicotto. "So I guess from day one it was part of the plan to just always be within the music scene with the brand."

One of the first bands to sign on with the band were pop-rockers Just Surrender from the nearby town of Poughkeepsie. "I knew those guys [Just Surrender] and they started wearing the stuff, and they would introduce me to other bands that they would be on tour with, and they would see them wearing the T-shirts and they'd be like 'Where'd you get that?' and then they'd put them in contact with me."

This was how Capicotto met the young pop-punk sensation All Time Low, a band that now works closely with Glamour Kills with a blog on its site and guitarist Jack Barakat's own line of designs. "The guys in Just Surrender were like 'Hey, you gotta check these guys out, they're awesome,' and I was like 'Oh yeah, we'll check them out' and when they were playing in New York I went and watched them and became friends with the band ever since and the rest is history."

These initial friendships with bands are the basis of Capicotto's professional relationships and sponsorships with their current lineup of over 40 musical groups, ranging from Silverstein to Forever the Sickest Kids and Boys Like Girls. Capicotto says it is important that the company really loves the band and what they stand for and are as serious about what they are doing as GK.

"Along the way we ran into a lot of bands that weren't fully into wanting to be in the band and you know just for fun and stuff... If we're going to help the band as much as we can, we want to know that they are in it for the long haul I guess," says Capicotto. "You know it's friendships before anything else and basically we're building friends and helping them out as they help us to wearing the stuff, but it's just rewarding for both parties and that sense of community helping each other out its kind of what the music scene's all about, and that's what we can to deliver with the sponsoring aspect of it."

After working solo out of his basement for a year and a half selling his clothes online and having local kids ringing his parents' doorbell wanting to buy T-shirts, Capicotto began hiring some of his friends to help out with the brand and looked into finding a new place to operate from. GK set up its headquarters and warehouse in Beacon, N.Y. and opened its first retail store, a place to not only buy their clothes, but also to hang out and catch some in-store performances.

"It's very laidback," says Capicotto about the first GK store. "It's just like a little boutique shop and has all our shirts on the walls. It's very green and very pink inside the store. and it's very relaxed and just a casual store, you walk in, hang out. We have Pickle, our store manager, and he's a funny guy so he's always there so anybody who wants to they can just hang out with him all day."

And Glamour Kills isn't stopping at just one store. The brand is currently carried in select Zumiez stores across the nation, and Capicotto is looking to open a store in New York City later this year and on the west coast soon.

"We get requests everyday from people like 'Why don't you open up a store in insert small town in Ohio' or you know, and it's kind of hard because we have to choose where we can do it. If we could I'd open a store everywhere, but we're looking around definitely something in our near future."

Capicotto is also expanding the Glamour Kills empire through the emergence of new lines. Not only do they carry T-shirts and hoodies, but the brand also includes denim, accessories like jewelry and bags, and they recently launched a skate line of decorative skateboard decks.

"Right now it's kind of slowly but surely, just you know, showing that we can appeal not only to kids within the music scene but also with skateboarding and extreme sports and stuff," says Capicotto about the new GlamKills Skate! line. "I know a lot about the music industry and not too much about skating so it's just kind of a learning experience and hopefully it's going be awesome and be a new market that we can work with. Hopefully we're accepted in there."