BELLO mag #127

Bello

#127

AFTER ROMEO On The Rise...

FUN UNDER THE SUN Issue

Bello PUBLISHER IMAGE NATION STUDIO L.L.C. California, USA editorial@bellomag.com ADVERTISING advertising@bellomag.com Aleksandar Tomovic (editor in chief) alek@bellomag.com Stephane Marquet (creative director) steph@bellomag.com Leslie Alejandro (executive director) leslie@bellomag.com Dio Anthony (entertainment editor) dio@bellomag.com Warren Alfie Baker (fashion director) warren@bellomag.com Nicole Walmsley (beauty editor) nicole@bellomag.com Dee Trillo (senior lifestyle and travel editor) dee@bellomag.com Michelle Ganney (associate entertainment editor) michelle@bellomag.com Fabio Fernandez (fashion news director) fabio@bellomag.com Kimmy Erin Kertes (fashion editor-at-large) kimmy@bellomag.com Hiko Mitsuzuka (entertainment editor-at-large) hiko@bellomag.com Morgan Stewart (lifestyle editor at large) boobsandloubs@bellomag.com Steven Carver (international editor) steven@bellomag.com Brent Lambert (design and technology editor) brent@bellomag.com Jon Norris (european editor) jon@bellomag.com Mark Norris (european editor) mark@bellomag.com Amanda Peixoto-Elkins (creative director, latin america) amanda@bellomag.com INTERNS PAULO ACUÑA (editorial assistant) paulo@bellomag.com CELESTE PIRAINO (social media and communications assistant) celeste@bellomag.com LAYOUT NEBOJSA DOLOVACKI CONTRIBUTING WRITERS COVER STORY: DIO ANTHONY STEVEN CARVER (Fashion) JON AND MARK NORRIS (fashion) CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS COVER: MAARTEN DE BOER

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EDITOR’S

note,

JULY, 4, 2016

We always find the hottest talent in town and around.

This issue is no exception. Welcome to our FUN IN THE SUN issue! This is issue, we give you everything summer, sunny, and sexy!

First, we present pop music sensation, AFTER ROMEO. Shot in and around a Hollywood pool by the fabulous photog duo, SOSA + ART, and styled by our very own Fashion Editor at Large, Kimmy Erin, these boys give us the sense of the real meaning of the 4th of July!

Also, shot in the streets of Belgrade, Serbia, we have Bello alum, the gorgeous and super sexy, Parker Young.

Enjoy these pages like you would a hot day in summer!

Stay cool all summer!

Sincerely,

Leslie Alejandro, Executive Director

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TB MOMENT OF THE WEEK

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BELGRADE WITH LOVE PARKER YOUNG

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Photographer’s SOSA + ART getting wet n’ wild during their cover shoot with mega pop band, AFTER ROMEO. June 2016

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PHOTO & POST ANDREJA DAMLJANOVIC STYLING NIKE BY NIKOLA DJORDJEVIC PRODUCER MARKO CKONJEVIC 29

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COMEDY FEST A Great New Addition To Europe’s Capital Of Fun And Good Time

BY MARKO CKONJEVIC

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elgrade has recovered from the troubles in the Balkans and became a modern city, with plenty of amazing urban and traditional features that set it apart from many European cities. It is a true capital of fun in Europe. Belgrade nightlife has many happenings that may interest you. The biggest of all is the Belgrade Beer fest taking place mid-August every year.

Free entrance, plenty of all kinds of beer from Europe and many parts of the world and good live music included! Ideal unique and unexpensive fun ! If you are not a Woodstock kind of person and you are more into closed parties, you can visit Belgrade Foam #127 issue - BELLOmag.com

fest, for example. Of course, there are many more options, if you are a jazz fan, Belgrade jazz Festival is the right place for you. Belgrade has it all. A lot of nightclubs, bars and “floating” river clubs along the riverbanks of Sava and Danube make Belgrade nightlife some

of the most exuberant in Europe. For nightlife aficionados who are new in the town, Belgrade is a land of breathtaking opportunities.

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Parker Young, Marko Ckonjevic, Parker Young, Stephanie Weber

and laughter, Belgrade added one more attraction to variety of dynamic offers in this capital and in Serbia itself.

The first edition of the International Festival of Comedy Film - Comedy Fest, was held in Belgrade but also in four other cities and 10 cinemas both in Serbia and Montenegro. From May 25th to 29 th (Cinemas are as followed: Cineplexx Ušće, in Kragujevac and Podgorica; Roda, Tuckwood, Fontana, Yugoslav Film Archive and Art bioskop Kolarac in Belgrade, Arena in Novi Sad and Cadmus in Budva).

made sure that you have fun not only while watching films, but also after leaving the cinema in a good mood, getting ready to party somewhere else in Belgrade. Every night there was an after party, hosted by some of the most popular stand-up comedians from Belgrade, and with the night falling down in the capital of the former Yugoslavia, music and laughter filled the air-everywhere! The Serbian capital pulses with

the electric energy of youth and nonstop music scene. Parker Young, one of the stars from the “4 th man out” was the festival’s guest at its first edition and saw for himself that Belgrade is the city that simply never sleeps!!!

Comedy Fest, has proven to be one good hell of an addition to the Belgrade image as the capital of FUN!!! See you next year!

Guided by the idea that comedy should be taken seriously, Comedy film festival- makers have created nine program segments, which altogether showed 15 films and 35 re-runs. The segments included dark comedy, football comedy, Italian sexy comedy, regional comedy, crime comedy, student and short comedy and rom-com, plus presenting a very rich selection of regional comedy and it featured interesting films made in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Slovenia.

Supporting program brought lots of laughter as well! Co-founders Fame Solutions and Superstar Culture have 31

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After Romeo On Their Show Social-Consciousness, Mak And Bending Fa

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BLAKE SHORTS ORIGINAL PENGUIN DREW SHIRT VOLCOM SHORTS AMERICAN APPAREL TC SHORTS ORIGINAL PENGUIN JAYK TANK AMERICAN APPAREL SHORTS TAILOR VINTAGE

wdown With One Direction, king Out With Strawberries, ate To Your Will.Â

WORDS BY JOSHUA BROWN PHOTOS BY SOSA + ART

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BLAKE JACKET PALM ANGELS SHORTS PERRY ELLIS TC SHIRT AND SHORTS J. LINDEBERG SUNGLASSES GSTAR RAW JAYK SWIM TRUNKS T. CHRISTOPHER SHIRT PERRY ELLIS DREW BLAZER IIJIN TEE PERRY ELLIS SHORTS FELTRAIGER VISOR LACOSTE

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nitially I was worried—not going to lie. When I first got to set they were wild, loud, and a challenge for the photographers to wrangle into one frame.

Some were Snapchatting between takes, Drew was making out with pool toys—a floating strawberry to be specific, and others were shouting new ideas for the next shot. I wasn’t sure how my interview was going to go.

Having partially dried off, they sat down to speak with me and a few things became quickly apparent. First, they’re really cool dudes and incredibly interesting to talk to. They knew when to be serious and when not to be. They were having a blast in the pool—then quickly switched gears when they began telling me their remarkable story. I would learn that the four of them combined really is a formula to make things happen.

About halfway into our interview I found myself incredibly inspired and totally cool with fan-boy’ng out. Why? Because these guys are self-made. Because of their blind determination and belief in themselves that they had something special to give to people. Nothing was handed to them. They taught me lessons in hard work and ingenuity. They took on responsibilities and issues that have already positively affected thousands of lives with their “Bullyproof” tour. The list goes on.

And with tens of thousands of fans— they were right. They have something very special and fate seems to have given chase.

Would you ever date a fan?

(All agree) Yes. Absolutely. If someone is cool and you vibe with them it doesn’t matter.

When I think of “boy band” I primarily think back to the 90s with nsync, backstreet, etc. Do you guys draw inspiration from them or do you try to differentiate from them?

TC: It was my first concert. NSYNC was my first live concert so of course 35

I think about that. It’s kind of what got me into music.

Jayk: I think what’s different about them and us is that we weren’t “put together”. Drew and I grew up in Vegas we met when we were twelve. Then when we moved out we met TC and Blake who are from Georgia so it happened a little more organically. Obviously those bands are unbelievable and they’re great and successful for a reason.

So if anything we can take away from them—it’s definitely the work ethic.

On that note what’s your definition of being successful as a band?

Drew: I think success is doing what you like to do and having fun doing it and being recognized for your talents rather than something stupid. So many people nowadays are successful for such stupid reasons. We like to show off our talents and hopefully they will come across to other people in a positive way.

Blake: I think for us. (speaking for) All of us--we connect the most with our fans when we’re on stage so selling out big places and having big audiences.

Drew: And being able to support your family who supported you so much.

Jayk: Each of us have people that we look up to for their artistry—the Justin Timberlakes—the Chris Brown’s—just their artistry. We’ve had some guys come to our shows and tell us they learned our dance moves or are trying to sing like us. So that’s cool. Having people copy what you do is very flattering. To inspire someone else.

How do you define music?

Jayk: We are all over the place with inspirations as far as genre. So we wanted to create a sound that best showed what we all like as a group. We got in the studio around the holidays, had a writing camp, and tried to come up with some really cool ideas. We have a song called Oprah and it talks about a girl that knows what she wants and goes after it. It’s so much easier to sing the songs you actually believe in.

Drew: We try to be a little more soulful sounding so you can hear our vocals more. Our pervious music we didn’t really show off the vocals as much. This album we do a lot of runs and adlibbing so you can hear that we can actually sing.

How do you guys come to a collective creative decision? Are there moments of friction? Because there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen…

Blake: We constantly come to that friction point. Especially when it comes to songs because we all have different opinions—different ideas. Sometimes we’ve had to do a vote. Other times we let the other run with their strengths so if there’s a certain genre that I’m not familiar with for instance—I’m gonna let Jayk come in and allow his opinion to be more prevalent than mine. So we’re really smart about working together to figure out what will be the strongest choices for any particular song.

Jayk: I think it’s important to get outside opinions too.

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DREW: I WRITE SONGS. THAT’S ALL I’VE EVER DONE. I’VE WRITTEN FOR MILEY CYRUS, SELENA GOMEZ, AND BIG TIME RUSH. IT’S BEEN REALLY COOL.

put egos to the side which I’m sure makes things a lot easier with that many creative minds occupying one space.

Drew: We also have listening parties too. We release small clips on Instagram and see what the fans like as well.

What was everybody’s job before the boy band or has this been what you’ve done from the start?

Blake: Before this I worked at a veterinary office actually.

Jayk: I was a lifeguard at the Bellagio in Vegas. That’s where Drew and I are from. Summers were awesome--lot’s of good scenery.

TC: Years ago I worked at Victoria’s Secret. It was a very smart situation.

Drew: I write songs. That’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve written for Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Big Time Rush. It’s been really cool.

Drew what drove you to song writing?

Drew: As a kid I listened to a lot of Elvis because my dad was an Elvis impersonator and Elvis had a lot of really cool concepts. I loved listening to it and I was like “I can write things like that” and that’s how it started.

You fellas have done a lot in terms of causes—you work with PETA, City of Hope, and an Anti Bullying tour called the “Bullyproof tour” where you visited 400 schools which I thought was especially remarkable.

Tell me about that.

Drew: It was a lot. One city we did 50 schools in two weeks. We actually got one school to bus in six other schools.

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WOW Blake: That one in particular we had the help of the entire school district to set that whole system up.

Drew: You would think a lot of school districts would want this especially because it was being offered by us for free. But we had to individually reach out to these schools and get in through a lot of finesse.

Wow, that’s a lot of logistics and work—who was doing all of that for you? Did you have some sort of phone list you would each work down or what?

Jayk: Dude we would literally cold call the schools and let them know we had something really great to offer their students. We wanted to offer our personal stories and how that affected us and our music in the sense that we didn’t let it affect us versus a teacher or student standing up there and preaching to them.

TC: Yeah when we’re around their same age and we say it happens or happened to us and we’re still successful so don’t be affected by it.

What was your main driving force to choose something like that? That takes so much time, energy, and sacrifice to pull off? Why are you so passionate about that one particular subject? Is there a backstory?

TC: It all happened to us. We all have a background of getting bullied. Growing up I did theatre and dance so of course people call you gay. But I also played baseball and no matter how good I was at that it never overpowered me being made fun of for being in musical theatre. Having that story and Blake having a similar one—all of us really—we

discovered that we can actually help people while promoting our music.

Drew wrote a song that was dedicated to the “Bullyproof” tour called “thank you”. And all the pieces seemed to fall into place.

Jayk: So after we would do all the touring of the schools we would have a free concert at a mall. We partnered with Westfield Malls and they were cool enough to have us there and allow us to have a free concert so we would invite all the kids we talked to that previous week come watch us.

Now that’s pretty incredible to think about. I’m only getting the surface or end result of what you guys had to do to actually pull that off. I’m sure there was so much more work that you had put in and you’re just being humble.

Blake: Ok we had to perform for each grade separately so we would perform three times at each school and go to three schools in a day…so we would perform nine concerts in one day.

Holy shit. That’s a lot guys.

Blake: We were performing but we were also the people running everything behind the scenes.

TC: The first year our manager let us use his SUV and we were just taking a trailer around with all of our equipment.

And we definitely saw that we needed to improve. And luckily we had some help from Ford and they helped us with a van with our name on it. It was exciting.

Jayk: Not gonna lie, it was exhausting but it was so worth it. At the end of the week concerts we would have these kids coming up to us and say how much our coming there helped them.

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JAYK: IT KIND OF WORKED OUT ITSELF TO BE HONEST. IT’S JUST KIND OF WHAT WE’RE ALL INTERESTED IN. BLAKE GREW UP DANCING, TC HAS A FASHION BLOG, DREW WRITES SONGS, AND I LOVE DOING SOCIAL MEDIA SO IT WAS EASY.

Personally, I think it’s an awesome thing to get behind. I’m of the same cloth in the sense that one person should be celebrated for having many identity capabilities versus what most would call “identity issues”. For instance, TC to be able to play baseball and then the next day go sing his ass off on a stage is bad ass. It shouldn’t have to be one or the other.

We feel the same way You guys are sort of a one-stop shop with one of you running social media, the other is songwriting, one handles choreography, and another handling your fashion. How does that dynamic play out?

Jayk: It kind of worked out itself to be honest. It’s just kind of what we’re all interested in. Blake grew up dancing, TC has a fashion blog, Drew writes songs, and I love doing social media so it was easy.

TC: Low key—Jayk is also a really good booking agent. He did the majority of our booking. Especially for the schools.

Jayk: Ryan Hill. I had an alias. I had to be our booking agent. I couldn’t say “hey this is Jayk from After Romeo can I come to your school?” I had to act like I was someone else—Ryan Hill the booking agent. Often I messed up saying “Yeah WE’RE gonna come dance and sing—I mean THEY are gonna come dance and sing” **we all laugh What was the catalyst or tipping point that brought you guys together?

Drew: We recorded a song called “free fall” and kind of just playing around we shot a video. But I said this video is nev39

er coming out unless we get on Vevo’s homepage or on Youtube’s homepage.

So Jayk or “Ryan Hill” calls like the normal Vevo offices. Just straight up cold calls Vevo and somehow convinced them to premiere it on the Vevo homepage.

TC: And the funniest thing is that when all this happened and we went to find a manager he was like “let me get this straight—you have a video—an amazing song—but you have no website and it’s coming out in an hour?” So he started making phone calls for us. It all happened fast.

Jayk: On top of that when we went to Vegas an old vocal coach of ours—Eric he was a big choir teacher. He had the idea that we come talk to some choir classes and he’d book them. So we go there for a week to see what we can do. Then the idea came up to maybe have a meet and greet at the end of the week. So let’s just show up gorilla style at a mall! So we were thinking like maybe 20 people are gonna show up. Then we get a call from one of our friends who’s already down at the mall and he’s like “yo it’s crazy down here”.

So we show up and there’s maybe 500 people there and security was going nuts so I think at that point is when we really thought that maybe we have something people want to connect to.

Blake: Personally, I think the tipping point was before that. We went to a One Direction concert and we had kind of talked about becoming a group and we showed up to the concert basically looking like…a group. So we walk into the audience and had third row seats.

As we were walking down certain little girls started looking at us and all of a sudden ALL of the heads were looking at us. And people started coming up to us and wanted to take pictures with us. By the end the entire theatre was swarming us because I guess they thought we were somebody.

TC: Well we were four guys in skinny jeans so it looked like…. *we all laugh Drew: We got escorted out and then back in again. So One Direction’s security came out and said I’m sorry guys you can’t stay here it’s disrupting the show so please follow me. And he took us to the side of the stage where we watched the whole concert.

Jayk: So it was like this weird stand off backstage with us and One Direction.

They were looking at us like “who are these guys?” and it was this awkward OK Corral face off that should have had music and tumbleweeds.

Blake: We were all on such a high after that experience that on the car ride back we were just like “Ok how do we do this? How do we get this really moving?” and then that’s when the music video came.

It’s cool hearing a theme from you guys. And the theme I keep hearing is “we did it” “we had to do this” you guys really seem like nothing was handed to you and that you guys really put yourselves out there and went after what you wanted. I think that’s passion.

What’s next for you guys?

Drew: We need to win this iHeart Rising Star radio contest. We’ve been bouncing between first and second place. You can vote fifty times a day.

So please vote as much as you can!

Vote on twitter!

So I’m sure your fans want to know— are you guys all single?

All of us except TC! Ready to mingle!

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BLAKE SHORTS FELTRAIGER TEE SAINT LAURENT DREW SHIRT ADIDAS SWIM TRUNKS SAINT LAURENT TC ALL SAINT LAURENT JAYK SHIRT ADIDAS SWIM TRUNKS SUNDEK 43

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VINTAGE SHORTS TAILOR

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SHIRT VOLCOM SHORTS AMERICAN APPAREL

PHOTOGRAPHY: SOSA + ART WWW.SOSAANDART.COM, @SOSAANDART STYLED BY: KIMMY ERIN KERTES, KIMMYERIN.COM, @KIMMYERIN STYLING ASSISTANT: JESSIE JAMZ, JESSIEJAMZ.COM STYLING INTERN: ROMELIA HERRERA GROOMING BY: TAMMY YI, @TAMMYYI, AND KASSIOPIA FIALA, @KASSIOPIAFIALA 49

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