Varvatos has designs on music
Teams with CEO of Taylor Swift’s label
The one thing you can say about New York-based menswear designer John Varvatos is that he’s as serious about music and people using their voices in this heated political climate as he is about making men’s clothes.
His brand has always included rock ’n’ roll-spirited leather jackets, strong suiting, and bold and slightly rebellious-looking footwear that could get a guy head turns, but not in an obnoxious look-at-me sort of way.
Varvatos has taken a deeper dive into the music scene recently. He announced in the fall that he had teamed up with Scott Borchetta, founder and chief executive of Nashville-based Big Machine Records (Taylor Swift’s record label), on his existing John Varvatos Records.
“I don’t want it to be anything about my ego,” Varvatos says, adding that he wants his label’s focus to be launching new artists and talent. “I really want it to be about the music.”
So exactly who is he listening to? “Tom Petty, No. 1. No. 2 is Tom Petty, and No. 3 is Tom Petty at the moment,” he says, scrolling through his cellphone. There was also Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real — Willie Nelson’s son’s band — as well as music by jazz trio Saft, Swallow and Previte featuring Iggy Pop, and the latest from rapper Machine Gun Kelly, who’s in the fall 2017 Varvatos campaign.
It was around 2005 that he started using artists in his campaigns, including the Roots, Alice Cooper and Dave Matthews.
“I saw early on that music artists were shopping with us and contacting us about clothes and photo shoots and tours,” Varvatos says. “And I thought, ‘That’s pretty amazing.’ Then you get people who were icons when you were growing up who want to wear your clothes or are already buying your clothes someplace. And you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, Jimmy Page is buying my clothes’ — or Alice Cooper or Iggy Pop or whoever it was at the time.”
At New York Fashion Week, Varvatos’ fall/winter 2017 “Wild at Heart” collection, according to show notes, was designed to give “the idea of nonchalant cool with an uncompromising devotion to elegance and boldness.”
The collection of tailored suits, leather outerwear, animal prints — and plenty of dandy flair — is available online and in stores.
Months after its debut, Varvatos says the collection was put together during the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“At this time in the world, we need people who have voices,” he says. “We need people that aren’t meek and sit back, but they want to create change out there. They don’t want to put up with the ... that’s going on . ...
“Even in the music industry, I believe it’s time for those rebels again — the ones that have a voice that isn’t just a fun pop song.”