John Varvatos

Rock in Fashion

John Varvatos, Holly George-Warren

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780062009791
• eBook ISBN: 9780062284563
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Fashion Design
• Index: History

SUIT YOURSELF

CHAPTER 10: IT’S ALL ABOUT TAILORING

JOE STRUMMER—hobo chic. With his sport coat, hat, and two-tone shirt, Joe looks like a cross between Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless and an American outlaw. Photograph by Roberta Bayley.

Tailoring, for me, is the heart and soul of rock & roll fashion: the tailored topcoat, jacket, pant, and vest. When you consider music history, every important artist’s look was based on tailoring, be it Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, or John Lee Hooker. The Chicago blues players wore a tailored suit: a jacket, a shirt, a tie, a vest, and trousers. Over time, wearing just the individual pieces has become more popular among musicians, rather than putting on the entire three-piece suit—except for traditionalists like Leonard Cohen and some young bands who’ve acquired a taste for tailoring, such as Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, and the Strokes.

I became interested in tailoring when I was young. As a kid, I never wanted to wear a suit, but then I saw cool-looking bands wearing them, and that totally changed my thinking. I loved the mods’ custom-made, three-button, Italian-styled suits with skinny lapels, short jackets, and narrow pants—perfect for riding a scooter or Vespa.

Dylan transformed his look in 1965, when he toured England and picked up his pegged pants, polka-dot shirts, and tailored jackets on Carnaby Street. Some British groups started going for longer jackets inspired by England’s Edwardian period, with a silhouette more like an hourglass, and King’s Road shops were a prime source for these. Granny Takes a Trip made crushedvelvet jackets and suits, giving us the rock & roll dandy. They also took a classic shape such as the two-button suit and created the garments in exotic fabrics. In the 1970s, Roxy Music’s front man and fashion plate, Bryan Ferry, wore eye-catching custom-made suits. Some of the design ideas from these halcyon days are still with us. Paul Smith said in the book Rock Fashion, “It was really the [London] shops of the times that led the bands and then the bands who make a particular look [like] the neat, modinspired look. . ..They all made the looks that the bands took on, and that led to acceptance by the mainstream. These shop owners and designers were the unsung heroes of fashion.”

Over the decades, the changes in tailoring styles, such as the width of the trouser leg, have affected other garments. For example, the bell-bottom jean came from the bell-bottom tailored garment, and both wide-leg and skinny jeans started as a suit style. Every season for my new collection, I begin with the tailoring. Whether it’s casual, funky, or chic and elegant, tailoring is at the root of every collection I design. In menswear, the tailoring is what differentiates one designer from another; along with cut, shape, and fit, it’s important how you make a statement with fabric. Changes in men’s tailoring tend to come as a gradual evolution: the lapel gets slightly wider or narrower; the pant gets a bit trimmer; the rise on a pant gets shorter or longer. In the last ten years, narrow pants and skinny jeans have become popular; a heavier guy feels slimmer in these, and a slimmer guy just feels kind of cool wearing them. With a tailored jacket, the shoulders can make you look stronger, tougher, or very sexy, depending on the cut.

Paul & Pete: PAUL WELLER, whose band the Jam took its style cues from the Who’s mod period, with PETE TOWNSHEND.

Photograph by Janette Beckman.

“Mod had had a vast effect on the bands...rather than vice versa...Townshend has always gone to great lengths to explain the influence mod had on him. Small Faces, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, and Marc Bolan—all of them came out of the mod scene.”

—Paul Weller, from Cool Cats, 1982

Onstage, artists want fabrics that reflect light so they stay cool while they’re performing: they want lighter-weight clothes, textiles with sheen, fabrics they can move in and that aren’t going to cause them to sweat under hot lights.

But rock & roll fashion isn’t just about the stage. Fashion starts on the street, then artists grab it, make it their own, and take it to the stage. Of course, rock & roll fas...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Introduction
• Band on the Run
• Hair
• Behind the Shades
• Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am
• Mad Hatters
• Scarf it Up
• Don’t Hang up My Rock & Roll Shoes
• Street-Walking Cheetahs
• Pattern Makers
• Suit Yourself
• Got the Blues
• Marching on
• Second Skin
• I am an Anarchist!
• Gypsies, Divas, and Tomboys
• Wearing the Message
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Photography Credits
• About the Author
• About the Coauthor
• Copyright
• About the Publisher