Alex Gaskarth: T-shirt designer by day, rock star by night
Three of the world’s favourite pop punkers in All Time Low now design t-shirts for clothing company Glamour Kills. We caught up with lead singer Alex Gaskarth for a quick chat about the bands involvement with the label.
How did you’re involvement with Glamour Kills first come about?
Well the band has always been involved with Glamour Kills. They sponsored us early on. We kind of came up with the company together. But as far as releasing our own lines, it’s really just been something that because it’s there and its possible to do, we thought ‘why not?’ They came along and were like ‘you should do something’ and I was like ‘ok, sure’. So that’s how mine came to be. Rian’s (Dawson, drums) was funny because his was kind of a joke about how he always thought that they didn’t do enough plain stuff. So he went for that one signature black shirt. Jack (Barakat, bass) was the first one to do it. I think it was just following in the footsteps of Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy bassist who started up a clothing company called Clandestine Industries). He wanted to do the clothing line and see how it went.
Have you always been into design?
Yes, to an extent. I’m more in to branding. I don’t necessarily care about if its a t-shirt or if its jeans or whatever. I just think that music ties itself into lifestyle so much that the two go together very well and I think that if you have any kind of impact on people musically you can roll that into something more. Into a culture, into a sub-culture. So that’s kind of what the approach was for me.
Is there any financial motivation?
I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t. People buy the t-shirts. It’s definitely a way for me to make a living. But no, it was more just because it was there and it was something else to try. Had we not had the partnership with Glamour Kills, I wouldn’t of reached out to some other company and been like ‘I want to make t-shirts’ because I don’t really care about it that much. But because we were partners with them already, it was just something to do.
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