George-Warren Holly - John Varvatos: rock in fashion

TO MY FAMILY, JOYCE , JOHN , LYNDSEY , AND THEA , FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY ROCK & ROLL OBSESSION, AND TO JIMI HENDRIX , MC5 , IGGY AND THE STOOGES , LED ZEPPELIN , AND ALL THE OTHER ROCKERS WHO GAVE ME MY PASSION FOR ROCK IN FASHION

A shot from the Spring/Summer 2007 John Varvatos/Converse advertising campaign. Photograph by Cass Bird.

Copyright 2013 John Varvatos

Rock in Fashion. Copyright 2013 by John Varvatos. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First published in 2013 by Harper Design

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ISBN 978-0-06-200979-1

EPub Edition OCTOBER 2013 ISBN 9780062284563

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011931360

Rock & roll never forgets.

Those lyrics from my hometown hero Bob Segers song by the same name summarize how influential rock & roll has been on my life and career. I wouldnt be where I am today if not for the music I discovered growing up in Detroit in the late 1960s and 1970s.

I came of age in Motor City, surrounded by the soundsand lookof rock & roll. From the soul/pop of Motown to such local rockers as the Stooges, MC5, Ted Nugent, Grand Funk Railroad, and Bob Seger, and touring bands like the Who and Led Zeppelin, the music enveloped me. Looking back at those days, I realize I wouldnt have become a fashion designer if not for the music in my life. There are traces of it in the way I dress and the look of my menswear collections over the past dozen years.

In this book of photographs, you will see some of the same images that caught my eye as a kid and have stayed with me, as well as newer photos that continue to inspire me. In effect, thumbing through these pages, youll find my personal note-book of the rock style ideas and influences that have made an impact on my work. A common thread links these images through the generationsand thats what this book documents: musicians from the 1960s to the present whove taken various styles and made them their own. Like the evolution of rock, once a genres there, you have to find a way to put your own stamp on it. Each of the artists here grew up listening to the music that came beforejust as I, too, watched my favorite artists and noticed the way they dressed.

My first musical memories date to The Ed Sullivan Show, when I was nine or ten. Thats where I discovered the British Invasion, which gave me my initial perspective on fashion as well: it was unique and novel, just like the music. The Beatles matching outfits werent very exciting, but I loved the Cuban-heeled boots they wore. The Stones seemed like the bad boys, refusing to dress alike. Theyand their clotheshad attitude. What struck me the most was that Mick, Keith, Brian, Charlie, and Bill each had his own individual styleyet the band as a whole had a cohesive look.

Around the same time, I got hooked on the radio. We had both the Detroit and Canadian stations. Right across the border, ten minutes away in Windsor, Ontario, there was a music director on the AM radio station CKLW named Rosalie Trombley. She selected so much fantastic music that Seger wrote a song about her, Rosalie, which was later covered and amped up by Thin Lizzy. If your record was chosen by Rosalie, youd get played around the country. She turned me on to a lot of great stuff. Some of my favorites were You Really Got Me by the Kinks and I Can See for Miles by the Who. I bought those bands records for the music, but I quickly noticed how cool the Kinks and the Who looked as well as sounded.

When I was twelve, I went to my first concert, a small local event. Immediately, the live experience made me want to be a rock star. Detroit was brimming with bands back then. We had outdoor concerts at fairgrounds and parks where some of Detroits best groups got started: MC5, the Stooges, and Ted Nugents Amboy Dukes, whose Journey to the Center of Your Mind was one of the first psychedelic records I ever heard. Another favorite band was the Rationals, who blended rock and soul on a song called Guitar Army and their version of Aretha Franklins Respect. Other Michigan groups, including Frijid Pink, SRC, and the Frost, would later play my high school. At the Michigan State Fair, held in Detroit, Id catch the Battle of the Bands, watching the entire roster of groups compete.

Live rock & roll wasnt just about hearing the music, though. It was the showbeing sucked into the whole visual aspect of the way the bands dressed, their aggression onstage. All the artists I liked had a unique style. In Detroit, a lot of bands emulated the stage presence originally created at Motown. They didnt do the dance moves, but they knew there was more to performance than just getting up onstage and playing; you had to give a lot more. Like the Rolling Stones, each guy in the Stooges and MC5, for example, had individual style, but as a group, they looked like a band of brothers, an army.