Combine a love for soccer, an eye for vintage fashion and a decade of agency experience and you have Lucas Capozzi-Shanks, founder of the sportswear-focused brand studio Scenes NY.
There, Capozzi-Shanks and his team curate an array of soccer vintage and ephemera, which they use as inspiration for their own original designs. In this interview, Lucas discusses his love for the beautiful game, the difference between nostalgia and history, and how he transformed a monthly newsletter into a brand that encapsulates the American voice on soccer.
JL
Please introduce yourself and your brand Scenes NY.
LCS
My name is Lucas Capozzi-Shanks, I was born in Michigan, went to school in Minnesota, and moved to New York City for a job the day after I graduated college. I have been working at creative agencies both full-time and as a freelancer for around 16 years (that hurts me to type). My brand, Scenes NY, is a byproduct of 10 odd years of tinkering and toiling in the sports lifestyle space, and how I express my love for soccer, the greatest spectacle the world has ever seen.
JL
Can you tell us about the journey that led you to start your own fashion brand in this space?
LCS
The agency world is filled with incredibly talented people, but has a funny way of breaking them down over time. As a creative, you can either accept it, make a decent career out of it (and good money in the process), despite what that work does to your time, energy and spirit. Or you can, like many people I know, learn from years of working in a rigid, demanding creative atmosphere and apply it elsewhere. I started a monthly newsletter curated around soccer style to fill a void left by my day-to-day job, which evolved into a large collection of soccer merch, teamwear and ephemera. A decade of agency work, six years of “editorial” research, and three years of vintage digging provided the foundation for a standalone brand — Scenes NY — which launched in 2020 with a single SKU: a world-class pair of soccer shorts.
JL
Is there a signature style or element that defines your brand? Has that style or element evolved over time?
LCS
“Scenes” is a phrase stolen from entitled British football fans essentially meaning “chaos,” but the brand is defined by a signature style found in American soccer: how teamwear and apparel used fit and flow and make you feel. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, everything was baggier, boxier and wasn’t so over-engineered or over-hyped. Silhouettes were simple, graphics were crazy. The Scenes NY brand continues to evolve, with new products based on these principles of simplicity, using familiar fabrics, and is more about the player who wears the clothes than clothes the player puts on. In simpler terms, I make products I love to wear when playing soccer, and it just so happens that that shape and sizing oozes style away from the field.
JL
Where do you draw inspiration from for your designs? Are there any historical or cultural influences that particularly inspire your work?
LCS
Soccer is, was and forever will be the most stylish sport. And that has nothing to do with current trends that have every brand producing their own kits, borrowing from sporting aesthetics, or big clubs collaborating with big fashion houses. Soccer players were effortlessly stylish before it was forcefully shoved through a fashion lens. My inspiration comes from eras defined as the “hardo” 1980s, the “audacious” 1990s and the “gaudy” early 2000s. Prior to that, teamwear was impractical and cumbersome, and everything after was manufactured on the cheap. Players of this era, especially in the United States, weren’t as visible as they are now with manufactured personalities for social media and the reflexive desire to be their own brands. They were free to be themselves in all aspects of life, from their style of play, preferred way of dress and their politics.
JL
How does a sense of nostalgia, either for a particular era of soccer or just generally, play into your designs and brand?
LCS
Nostalgia is huge right now because it’s cheap, easy and accessible. But if you spend a little more time digging, if you really get below the surface level of “things we all remember,” and beyond what triggers thumbs to double tap on social media, you discover a more interesting, more authentic range of inspiration. And with soccer, it’s endless. It’s the most widely recognized, played and viewed sport in human history, ranging from elite professional leagues down through the amateur level, into the corners of communities in every city and out onto the streets. I don’t like the word “nostalgia” because it feels like an emotion to capitalize on. I like to think that the sport has an endless historical archive anyone can navigate with their own intuition, creating an encyclopedia that meanders into the past and forever forward. It’s more anthropology than anything.
JL
Can you describe the process of selecting and curating the vintage soccer pieces for your store?
LCS
The thing with vintage is that there’s so much more clothing in the world than we ever need as a society, and that pile keeps growing. There’s just… so much of it. But it takes more than a few eBay alerts to truly understand the landscape and find the “good” stuff. I’ve spent so much time and energy wading through relics and obsessing over details from soccer’s past that I’ve developed a knowledge base that’s inherent to my brain and my heart, but I couldn’t teach it.
JL
What materials do you prefer to work with and why?
LCS
Cotton, nylon and polyester with reliable sportswear trim and finishing. I call them “familiar fabrics” because that’s how they feel when you put them on and play in them. I heard Angelo Urrutia from 4SDESIGNS talk about how cotton used to be considered a performance fabric by big outerwear brands before all this “#gorpcore” technical outerwear came into existence and became trendy. And the thing is, anything works as a performance fabric if you perform well in it.
JL
Are there any new themes or concepts you’re exploring for your upcoming collections or designs?
LCS
As our vintage catalog continues to evolve, I continue to find small details that jog my memory to feel a certain way and then inspire new designs. Last winter at training, I wore a crewneck sweatshirt inside out because it had a non-soccer graphic on it, and I loved the way it felt. So we have a training sweatshirt on the way with the self fabric turned inside out releasing this winter (you heard it here first). Beyond those “a-ha” moments, I personally catalog, try on and occasionally wear out anything that comes through our catalog that fits. You can’t just find inspiration online and turn it into tech pack sketches anymore. You have to touch garments, you have to try them on. You have to wear them around, get to know what you love and hate about them, and, how do I say this eloquently, “try some shit.”
As for themes, I’m pursuing the idea of seasonal capsules not in terms of fashion seasons, but soccer seasons. Imagine a range of products released together that you’d receive as part of making a “team.” So at the start of the season, you get a top, a shirt, a pair of pants, some socks and a hat — all in uniform colors — and you get on the team bus. Maybe we’ll get a team bus.
JL
How would you like to see your brand evolve in the next few years?
LCS
Evolution as a brand is a funny concept because in America everything is talked about in terms of scale. I don’t want to scale up, I want to continue to narrow in on a very specific vision, one that I think other creators don’t have the foresight to see, because they get caught up in design trends, “of-the-moment” aesthetics and creations that are made to feed the social media algorithm. The more Scenes NY can narrow in on the authentically American soccer story we’ve been telling, the stronger the brand gets, and the more people appreciate our product. Then won’t have to rely on ”day in the life” Instagram Reels or #OOTD videos on TikTok to tell our story, which I absolutely do not want to create.
JL
What is your perspective on the current state of the fashion industry? How do you think the industry needs to change or evolve?
LCS
I don’t consider myself part of the fashion industry because I didn’t go to fashion school and I have never worked for a fashion brand in any real capacity. But as an outsider, it all feels like too much. The bar for starting a brand and creating content to market products is very low.
I can only speak to the creative community and our contributions to the fashion and lifestyle sector. As creatives, we are often our own worst enemy — constantly projecting a false sense of importance and success while undercutting each other for pay in exchange for access to brand dollars. Boutique creative agencies staffed by people who’ve never worked at one. “Creative Directors” with nobody at their direction. Inflated portfolios, exaggerated contributions to projects, unproven capabilities, and a drumbeat of embarrassing LinkedIn posts claiming credit. All of this ultimately undervalues creative worth and creative work.
Brands should be built by creatives who have dedicated years to their craft, supported with hard work, diligence, cooperation and high standards. If we continue this race to the bottom, we’ll all be forced to work on brands and projects supported by trust funds, because it will be the only sustainable way to exist. Also, maybe this is petty and anecdotal, but we should chill on the amount of soccer jerseys out there.
JL
If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring fashion designers, what would it be?
LCS
Start creating something consistently today and see where you are in 10 years.
A Image by Matthew Stith
B Image by Matthew Stith
C Image by Raph Gaultier
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