Denver brothers open apparel brand along 16th Street Mall

Brothers Zaki and Elias Hamid have been stitching together a clothing brand since 2024. Now, the two are adding a shop along the 16th Street Mall.

“It’s a bit of a retail graveyard right now, but these opportunities on 16th Street are about getting through this transition phase,” 34-year-old Zaki said. “There are a bunch of glimpses of it being really cool here.”

“We’re signing on now to be here when that moment arrives,” said Elias, 28. “We want to be something for the city to be proud of.”

Their brand Puppet Theater, named after a local puppet theater that closed in mid-2020, is the first business to open within the Jevon Taylor-led project at 640 16th St.

The Hamids, who also ran the shuttered streetwear vendor Steadbrook in RiNo, signed a seven-year lease for the 3,400 square feet in July.

The store’s buildout, expected to be done by the end of the year, will cost $200,000 and is funded entirely by a grant to Taylor from the Denver Downtown Development Authority.

Before moving to the corner of 16th and California, the pair spent two years in a shared 1,000-square-foot space in Sakura Square, along the 1900 block of Larimer Street.

“This fund is definitely a lifeline,” said Elias of the DDDA money. “You need someone like Jevon to come in and curate this space. We want to be part of the counter-narrative down here.”

Since the brothers launched Puppet Theater in 2024, they’ve released collections of clothing twice a year — one for the fall and winter and another for spring and summer. They call each of those collections “acts” as in a play.

The two didn’t actually frequent the theater but said they passed by it almost daily and thought it was a “quirky, strange thing to exist.” Elias said they’ve heard stories of kids going there on field trips or birthday parties and also from renters who used to live above it.

The business’s name intends to invoke nostalgia and honor for a lost era, Zaki said.

“It was just like, ‘Wow. The pandemic even closed something like that,’” he said of the theater, which was open for 25 years in the West Highland neighborhood. “No one was resistant. Same with your favorite bar that closed.”

Zaki is more of the creative director while Elias handles the business side.

Zaki said their $60 T-shirts, $170 pants, $180 jackets and $40 hats are meant to be versatile. Some could be worn for a nice night out or to a business meeting. Others carry a more distressed, punk look.

Puppet Theater also sells its clothes online and in stores across the world, including Saudi Arabia and Portland, Oregon.

Those wholesale accounts are largely from connections they’ve made during Paris Fashion Week.

The Hamids plan on releasing their next collection, which will be the first to feature footwear and is called “Act V”, once construction wraps. The pair said the space will be predominantly white and futuristic looking.

They’ll also sell other accessories, home goods, jewelry and the like from outside brands to complement their own clothing.

“We want to do something unexpected and make people feel transported,” Zaki said of the space, which he wants to stand apart from other local outdoors and western brands like Topo Designs and Rockmount Ranch Wear.

The brothers are Puppet Theater’s only full-time employees. They manufacture their clothing in China.

Since moving onto 16th Street, they said the “right kind of people” have been coming into the space, which hasn’t been occupied for a decade and was a former bank branch. That includes tourists from Union Station and the nearby convention center along with locals interested in the fashion.

In 2025, Puppet Theater’s first full year, the Hamids did $250,000 in sales. This year, they’re tracking to hit $300,000.

“We have ambitions to start seeing the store do around $1,000 a day and eventually match that online the more we offer and more we do,” Elias said.