By Jeannette Batz Cooperman
Photographs by Theresa Arnold
It started with an antique brass skull, bought on impulse in New York. More skulls followed, in ivory, jade, crystal, silver. Then, a few years ago, Kevin Glazer saw a $250 skull T-shirt in an L.A. boutique and thought, hey.
He came home to his St. Louis printing company and talked to his designer, Tom Wiley. They used found art—a 1920s Skull & Bones invitation from Yale, for instance—and a supersoft, enzyme-washed, form-fitting tee printed only with one-color screens. Glazer named the T-shirts “Zipper” because he liked how the Z looked. Orders poured in.
So Glazer flew back to L.A. and called on Fred Segal, a boutique where Julia Roberts and Madonna shop. The Segal buyer pronounced the skulls and crossed guns “a little too hardcore.” Glazer offered gentler drawings: a botanical print of a butterfly for women; antique calligraphic drawings of a bull, an elephant and an old King James crown for men. He returned to the skull, too, but in a cheerful bright-pink/lime-green version—sort of a preppy skull.
Fred Segal bit.
Soon singer Gwen Stefani, of the band No Doubt, was photographed in a Zipper tee. Marcia Cross, of Desperate Housewives, bought one. So did Matthew Perry and David Arquette. Here in St. Louis, creative types at Zipatoni, nicknamed Zippers, bought the shirts on principle.
As the skulls caught on, Glazer added vintage spiders, tigers and snakes. His 10-year-old son, Ryan, demanded a series of mythical creatures—and now the lead singer of Yellow Card is wearing a bleach-splattered minotaur Zipper.
Glazer, with partners, built a boutique around his T-shirts. Tucked into the new shopping center at Clayton and Lindbergh, PLAY sells Zippers for $34 (prices are higher at Fred Segal).
Glazer’s latest inspiration is 1920s tattoos from Russian prisoners. Meanwhile, the antique brass skull has found its way, in hot pink, onto a black cloth gift bag. “All of a sudden, there are skulls everywhere,” says Glazer with a grin. “It’s high fashion.”
