Puppet Theater
'Good is not good enough. A design has to be great. It has to be especially unique, have its own point of view, and its references all need to have some kind of consequence to them'
Evan Dale // March 26, 2025
Puppet Theater is burrowed into nostalgia. The Denver brand is all about remembering. The name itself is taken from the now-closed Puppet Theater, chased from the city like so many other neighborhood establishments that couldn’t live up commercially to the ever-gentrifying tide and the ever-climbing costs of operating a business anywhere near downtown. Not new to the block themselves, Zaki and Elias Hamid – the brand’s founders and designers – owned and operated Steadbrook – a highly curated streetwear and high fashion boutique in RiNo – for nearly a decade before its closure in 2023. But it wasn’t so much an end as it was a new opportunity for the brothers to move away from curation and more casual merch in pursuit of legitimate design rooted deeply in memory. Fitting then that they now find themselves in Sakura Square – a 1970’s mixed-use high-rise downtown itself rooted heavily in Japanese culture and a nostalgic, more diversely designed Denver. Pseudo-brutalist concrete forms with sweeping ground floor windows welcome guests to a space shared equally between the new brand bore into lasting ideas, and Flatfield Denim – a curated vintage shop and denim retrofit operation run by master tailor, Masaki.
Fresh on the heels of Puppet Theater’s sophomore release, Act II: We Have Just Begun ;Flower, we sat with Zaki and Elias to talk about their past with Steadbrook and curation, their present exploring Denver nostalgia through a much more wide ranging global and futurist lens, and what it all means for their future.
Ringleader: How long were you guys operating Steadbrook?
Zaki: I owned it for nine years and it was open 13 years total.
Ringleader: You bought it?
Zaki: I bought it. Three guys owned it originally. I had worked with them, and then they were going out of business. They were gonna close it down, so I was like, “hey, would you guys actually sell this business? So, I kind of saved them from some kind of a financial disaster, and that was when Steadbrook was originally on South Broadway, right between Pie Hole and Irish Rover. That was kind of where it all began and a year in, the landlord was trying to fuck us over, doubled the rent, so then we moved, and we ended up over in the Five Points and RiNo area. We were there, I guess for seven or eight years. We grew tremendously and learned a lot, and it ended up being probably the most serious store Denver ever had.
So, it was a bummer to close it, but I think looking around at the retail landscape right now, it's just really tough. Margins are thin. When costs of living are so hard and so high, you’ve gotta really be doing a lot of sales every single day to sustain it. So, I think here, it's still the same situation where we there's a pressure to sell, but I think we have more control, we can do it our way, and we're not so reliant on moving inventory. It was just so fickle. Even a brand, maybe something popular, think of like an Asics. Yeah, Asics is popular, but one model out of the ten you order sells out, right? And now you got nine models that eh, it's okay, but it's not the thing that people really want. Here, now that we do the design work, I think we can keep our efforts more concentrated in terms of picking styles and doing things that we really know our customers are gonna want, right? So yeah, it's a little bit different, but it definitely puts to use everything we learned in that first journey.
Ringleader: It's gotta be nice to have more control over the creative side of things. Curating is obviously creative in function, but doing the actual design of product has gotta be a cool step to take and to do something a little bit differently.
Zaki: It definitely is, and I think also more daunting. Because it's even just that extra level of, “are people gonna like this?” You know? I think for me, I just have a very intense pressure. Good is not good enough. It has to be great. It has to be especially unique, have its own point of view, the references all need to have some kind of consequence to them. When you're making things for yourself, how the audience receives it is everything. So, when you misfire and you make 100 of something, I think you feel the pain even more intensely. But at the same time, I think that’s the only way to kind of figure it out. You gotta go to war. I think from our experience with Steadbrook, we got a good amount of time kind of doing just that – just figuring out what do people like, how do they like it? Why do they like it? For me, going to market a lot of times, I felt like, “man did these designers ever work in retail? Have you ever sat in a shop and told someone to buy these white sweatpants for $500?” We have a lot of bones to what it is we want to do, just from that past experience.
Ringleader: It's a cool angle to come at it from. Like you said, there probably aren’t enough designers that have that attachment to their actual customer base. You probably have a more nuanced approach than you would if you never had that sort of experience.
Zaki: Absolutely. and I think sometimes designers think, “I don't wanna I sell out. It's not gonna be commercial.” But in the world of fashion or product design, the most important moment of this thing we’re designing is someone trying it on, being excited about it. and taking it home. If you don't do that, then it better look nice on that rack, ‘cause that's the only thing it's gonna do. So, to me, that's where the impetus is. Wearability. You could probably look at a Lulu Lemon piece or something like that and of course that’s so wearable or whatever, but to me, it's about finding styles and finding ways to do something more interesting in people's closets more options.
Ringleader: And how has it been trying to get something interesting in people’s closets when there is so much financial insecurity in people’s lives? It’s gotta have been a tough time to start a brand.
Zaki: I's definitely tough across a lot of fields right now, but especially in fashion. If things aren't selling, you’ve got a giant problem there. And I think if you look at a lot of these big retailers. that's the case for a lot of their product. It’s not that a couple categories or a couple brands are kind of dragging their feet sales wise, it's that most of the stuff is kind of sitting there. You’ve got a ton of markdowns. So, you know, that's where we wanna come with a really good price, really great product and something fresh, something original, something that has its own flavor to it, you know?
Ringleader: When you guys were running Steadbrook, were you designing stuff too on top of the curation side of things?
Zaki: We had an inhouse line, but I think for me, that's where I didn't want it to just be T-shirts, you know? I didn't wanna just do merch. I think if anything, that was kind of one of my holdups. I wanted to do something that was at this proper level. We would definitely make stuff. I mean, shop T’s and hats and you know? It was always the first thing anybody would ask for. But towards the end, I think I had gotten kind of bored of that. Steadbrook was a great shop with a great name that just kind of sold whatever the offering was in the time. But I think by the end – actually in 2020, that's when the original Puppet Theater closed down – that was when the idea first came to me. I was like, “Oh, dude, here's this really cool funky thing that's representative of this old Denver. Now it’s gone and no one's ever gonna bother to remember it.” And at the time I just thought the name was so cute and clever, and I even thought about rebranding Steadbrook to Puppet Theater. It's so esoteric. We obviously didn’t make that change, but then when we closed, it was kind of that same narrative of the original theater closing down and this beloved place that means so much to so many people ceasing to exist anymore, because rent not too high or whatever. To me, it was this bug I couldn't shake off. Remembering the past, and just kind of holding gently those little things.
I mean, even here at Sakura Square where it feels like a moment in time. They don't build buildings like this anymore with nice big open courtyards and tons of built-in retail space and all that. So, I think even being here is raising that flag of like, “if you love the city, be a part of it, be involved.” You see so many restaurants that have closed in the past couple of years and everyone is always like, “Oh my God, I can't believe Denver Diner closed. I haven't been there since 2009, but I loved that place.” I'm sure they were wondering where everyone was then, you know what I mean? If you say you love this place and you haven't been in 15 years, go figure that it goes. That's a story that I think if you're from Denver is gonna be resonant. But I think more broadly – go to Brooklyn, go to go to Seattle, go, go to fuckin Idaho, you know what I mean? Anywhere that's grown a lot, I think has experienced this exact same thing. Puppet Theater is something that's very core Denver-centric, but I think also within that narrative, something that's kind of universal.
Ringleader: Obviously from the name to the ethos, there is that very Denver-centric identity at the core of Puppet Theater. So, how do you think that shows up in the actual design?
Zaki: Yeah, I think that for me is where – being from Denver and having these experiences at Steadbrook originally, people would always tell me I should try opening this up in LA or New York – I thought it was an advantage to not be the place where everyone else is. And yeah, like I think in the clothing itself, that's where I've been lucky to travel and do various things for fashion, but these are all styles that I feel as very much worn in Denver, that I can picture somebody wearing just walking down the street here. Take something like this – it's a military kind of cargo pant, but then this is something that is probably more of kind of like a Western inspiration. I guess just leaning into what my vision of the people I've seen a million times in Denver. You think of the punk scene on South Broadway and Baker; think of like the Rockabilly presence or how hopppies have inspired the culture here. A flannel is like as classic you can get, but how do we do that in a way that's super unique? I like to lean into something being kind of straightforward, like this is a bomber jacket that doesn't have like a ton of embellishments. it's just in my opinion, as nice of a bomber jacket in that style you can make. Then there are other pieces where it's kind of this fever dream version of Denver. What even is Puppet Theater? Just take a look at our Fitting Room, and that’s kind of the unanswerable question we’re trying to answer.
Ringleader: So, I saw it on your story yesterday – you had a DJ in here for the release party, right?
Zaki: Yeah, we've done a couple sets up front and then our friend wanted set up the mannequins in there, and “I was like yeah, that's gonna be a vibe.” As people were coming in, I was like, “do you wanna go to a really tiny concert?” And that all leads back to the idea of what is Puppet Theater? Is a it a place? Is it a fantasy? Is it a real thing? It's real when we make it a real thing. That's where this room kind of expresses some of that personality.
Ringleader: How was the launch party? How did everything go?
Elias: Overwhelming. The response was great, but it was almost so busy that we couldn't move.
Zaki: Yeah, it was great. and I think each time that we have an event, we just learn more about how to make the next one better, so there was it was a really good time. It was nice because anyone that I talked to, they were like, oh, “I haven't seen these people in forever,” or “I just met a new friend.” The best part is having the space a place for people to come and see someone you haven't seen in a while or meet someone new. Just having a meeting place because there are so few events spaces like that left where you could just show up and find something totally different.
Elias: Yeah, it was really fun. It was just out here in the space and in the courtyard, I think probably around 200 people throughout the night. At any given time, people were flooding into the back too.
Zaki: Thinking back to Steadbrook too, we would have a party, say for Rick Owens or Stüssy. A hundred people better come for the Rick Owens party or whatever, but now that we're not relying on those outside voices as much. There’s more of a Denver Pride, pride of this community, you know what I mean? People were supporting us tangentially versus now, there's only one reason to come here, and it's not because you wanted a discount on Stüssy. It’s because you wanna come support what we're doing.
Ringleader: So you feel like you’re still able to tap into the local aspect of that community you built at Steadbrook, without it feeling like there’s a hidden motive for the support?
Zaki: I think that's where Denver is an interesting place because sometimes, I think it can just be isolating. Everyone's on their own little island or you got some dope artist with a dope studio and they're just working in silence or whatever. But then I think there's also this other effect where because of that we could kind of raft together a little bit. But I’ve just found that people in Denver can be so competitive or so shady or just every man for himself with stuff. And maybe I’ve just been in the game too long I'm an old head now.
Ringleader: I completely understand that. Whatever version of that community is for you or for your brand, community here can be the hardest thing not only to tap into, but to kind of create from scratch because it’s not so well established. It's hard in Denver to convince someone to do something even if you know they're gonna like that thing. It's hard to get people out for something. It can feel like pulling teeth, where in a lot of other cities, that community is much more established.
Zaki: Right. There are a few clubs and they're always like, “it’s all about community and we want to empower local creatives” or whatever. And then they’ll turn around and charge you a friends and family discount to collaborate with them for $5,000. A lot of times we joke about the crab bucket mentality out here of like one person's getting a little bit ahead and everyone is just back in the bucket trying to claw them back in. It’s a bit of a joke, but I also think there's some truth with it.
Of course, I’m saying this is all after having thrown a party that was a big hit, you know, so I don't I wanna sound too bitter with it, but there is something that just seems like it's really hard to build up that critical mass here, where other places, you know, Chicago or something, it's like people are really excited to support their homies and kind of band together to make something.
Ringleader: Well, how do you think you’re starting to find a footing here that is showing you a bit of a changing tide in that competitive, standoffish kind of environemtn that Denver can be? Why do you think your launch party was a success? And do you think you’re starting to build a little bit of that community?
Zaki: We have a bit of a laissez-faire attitude. Like, you’re photographer that wants to do a shoot. Let us know how we can collaborate or let us know when you wanna use our studio or if you wanna do a pop up. The only way we’re gonna win out here is by really embracing and trying to cultivate that community rather than just make something off it or you know? Kind of like with the original Puppet Theater – it was a children's playhouse that would occasionally do drag shows and stuff like that. That's where I kind of see us carrying that torch of like a life raft for the freaks, so to speak. Come band together. You wanna nerd out about pants – so do we. What was cool about Steadbrook with the Denver community was that there are so many people who would work some tech job, but then they'll talk to you for six hours about some new collection or something. Some people really care. Th ones that do really are serious and they really are passionate. But I think finding ways to connect those dots and then monetize it somehow – to make it sustainable – that’s the challenge.
Ringleader: How was Paris?
Zaki: Man, it super cool. It was kind of a bit of a homecoming film for us. Probably 2018 was when I went first, but after that, other than the pandemic, we would go twice a year for Spring / Summer, then Fall / Winter. There’s all kinds of markets you can go to in New York, you can go to LA, London fashion week, Copenagen fashion week, but Paris has always really been the one where if you were serious, you were going. Towards the end of Steadbrook, we would do probably 80% of our maybe even 90% of our buying there in Paris. Going back as a brand, we managed to get some legit orders out of it, but I think what I would say about this time of Paris is that it’s just a tough time in in fashion. You talk to big retailers about what’s working well, and they’re just excited for something new. And we were one of the new brands that they were actually looking at. And I think it was just that when times are tough, that leaves opportunities for new guys to come with new strategies.
