John Varvatos

“I loved the MC5 and the Stooges, but also, the British Invasion - the Kinks and the Yardbirds - and then Led Zeppelin, of course. Alice Cooper was one of my favorite bands.”

“The music alone wasn't enough. It was great, but when an artist had an amazing look - like the MC5, or the Stooges, or Alice Cooper - you really got sucked in. The wardrobe was so important....”

“For me, growing up in Detroit, scarves meant cold weather. But I remember working in a store, and we had some silk scarves - like, wide scarves with fringe - and because I had seen the Engli...”

“My vision is the ability to design clothes for a man who wants to create his own style and doesn't want to dress like he's in uniform, to look like the guy in the ad, or to feel like he has...”

“Music has always been a dominant force in my life. As a young kid, it was a way for me to escape everyday life.”

“A part of my kind of design and inspiration ethos is that I carry around a leather notebook and I sketch in it, doodle in it, write notes in it, and I put pictures in it.”

“Music and fashion have had a kind of incestuous relationship since the Fifties. It started with people like Elvis Presley and pop icons like James Dean. Then it exploded in the MTV days. Now...”

“The thing about the basics is they don't really change - it's the details and the proportions that change. The shirt may be cut slimmer or looser, the suit might be darker or lighter, the sn...”

“When I think of artists that I would have loved to work with, it's Jimi Hendrix. And Steve McQueen. He's not a rock star, but he's kind of a rock star to me.”

“When I started working in fashion, I didn't have money to buy photographs, so I'd Xerox pictures from magazines and put them in notebooks. When I'd start a collection, I'd sit with my old no...”