Washington Capitals’ wives and girlfriends will have a special tribute for their husbands and significant others during this year’s playoff run.
The squad will be rocking brilliant, custom-painted jackets by local artist (who’s gone national) Taylor Kampa Olson.
The cream-colored Caps jackets feature the Capitol Dome logo on the back, which was the shoulder patch on the team’s Reverse Retro jerseys this season. Each Capitol Dome logo had its puck design altered so that it features each player’s number. The last name of each player is painted in Old English font on the right sleeve while their nickname comes in cursive under the back collar. The left sleeve features the player’s number spelled out.
The front is more subtle. The design features three black and white stars above each pocket and the player’s number on the top left in the Reverse Retro font.
“They were my idea with some help from a few of the girls,” Paige Dowd said. “All of the jackets were actually purchased for last year’s playoffs but we never had TKO paint them because of the pandemic. So we’ve just been hanging onto them ever since, in a rubber bin in my basement.”
“I was so excited to do these last season and then the world shut down,” Taylor said. “So I’m so happy it finally happened!”
Taylor received the jackets on April 19 and handpainted each one. The “non-stop” process took four weeks and 30 jackets in total were painted. Taylor estimated that she had been art’ing around 14 hours a day, meaning the whole process took about 392 hours or over one day per jacket.
“My brain is like broken, I’m so tired,” she said laughing.
The Caps’ WAGs were very happy with her work. They had a jacket reveal on Thursday at a DC nail salon. There was lots of smiling and disbelief as they picked up their new swag.
Taylor delivered the final six jackets on Saturday morning ahead of Game One of the Capitals’ first-round series with the Boston Bruins.
As for Paige, she was thrilled with how the process turned out even though it was a year later than she had planned. The jacket is her second from TKO.
“I’ve always loved the Capitals’ retro jerseys so on the back of that jacket that features Nic, I also have the Capitol Building in the background.”
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