Why John Varvatos decided to move his show to New York

After showing in Milan for eight years, the New York-based designer is staying put to support the inaugural New York Fashion Week: Men's.

John Varvatos at his fall 2015 show in Milan. Photo: Imaxtree

When you think of American menswear designers, John Varvatos is one of the first names that comes to mind. And yet, for the past eight years, he's shown his full season collections at Men's Fashion Week in Milan rather than in New York — until this week, that is. Varvatos will show his spring 2016 collection on Thursday, closing the inaugural New York Fashion Week: Men's — an event that may not have had the same weight without his involvement.

When his participation was announced, CFDA CEO Steven Kolb described Varvatos as a "tentpost," suggesting he was instrumental in bringing other designers on board and lending the event more legitimacy in its first season. That's been no easy task, with the long-established men's fashion weeks in Paris, Milan and London to compete against.

To kick off NYFW: Men's, we chatted with Varvatos about his reasons for moving his show to New York, why he opened a store in downtown Detroit this spring and what musician he'd most like to cast in an ad campaign. Read on for our interview.

How did you decide to move your show from Milan to New York?

[Showing in Milan] was great for us to support our global expansion. At the same time, when I started the company in 2000, I used to show in New York — there wasn't a real Men’s Fashion Week and it was always part of women’s. The CFDA finally got it together, which is fantastic, and they of course wanted me to be supportive and part of it. Emotionally, I wanted to, but business-wise I was still kind of connected with Milan. But then I opened up a store in Detroit in March or April. It’s my hometown... everybody said, 'Why would you open in downtown Detroit? There’s nothing there." I wanted to support the city and its rebirth and all these things. So when I was there for the opening, I was thinking about the CFDA question and I thought, I’m an American designer, I got my start here, my market's here, I need to come out and support.

Are you nervous that this event won't be as beneficial business-wise as Milan was?

I think it’s going to be great, but I don’t know what to expect. My thing is that it’s the right thing. It’s kind of like opening the store in Detroit; it’s been fantastic and our expectations weren't that high because the market is so underdeveloped downtown. I kind of felt the same thing here. Everything that works for me in Milan may not work 100 percent here in New York, but there’s going to be other magical stuff.

Steven Kolb described you as a "tentpost" of the week. Do you think you were a deciding factor for other designers?

I did it for what I feel are the right reasons, which was to support Men’s Fashion Week in New York, and also to hopefully attract some people who were on the fence about coming. If I did any of that I’m happy. In the end, I think when the stronger American designers show, it shows that there’s something happening. I think we have a good turnout.

A look from the John Varvatos 

fall 2015 show in Milan.

Photo: Imaxtree

Do you intend to show at the next NYFW: Men's?

It’s hard to say because I need to look at it both from the business side as well as the fashion part, so I need to evaluate it after the show. I think I’d be able to tell you that a lot better at the end of the month.

Can you tell me a bit more about the decision to open up a store in Detroit this spring?

I grew up in Detroit and I’ve always been a big supporter. My family’s still there. I traveled there with my CEO who is Italian and had been living in the U.S. for about three years and never been to Detroit. It was the coldest day of the year, like 35 below, and we walked around downtown. We were headed to the airport and he said, 'I have one thing to say.' I thought he was going to say, 'Are you out of your mind?' but he said exactly what I was thinking: 'We need to do something here.' We felt an excitement and a buzz, so we opened the store in March.

The city’s been behind us; the consumers came out and supported the store in a big way... And they’re attracting additional people downtown because of it now. There, I feel we were definitely an impetus because we went on the main drag where there’s no retail at all and we really did kind of plant our flag in there. It wasn’t a strictly business decision — it was a lot of an emotional decision. At this point in time, after the first four months, it seems that it was a great decision — business has been terrific, better than we ever expected. It’s reminiscent of Brooklyn 10 or 15 years ago when it was starting to cook. I truly believe in the next five years it will be the most talked about city in the world for urban renewal and opportunity, so it’s an exciting thing to be part of.

Do you see Detroit ever becoming a destination for fashion retail?

It’s a pretty blue collar city in general, but there’s also a lot of money there because of the automobile industry. I think it takes a little bit of convincing for some fashion people to understand it when they go there; we have a little bit more of an ear to the street and we like a bit of grit. The clientele that’s been shopping is interesting: it’s people who work downtown, it’s people from the suburbs, it’s tourists that are in town and business people that are visiting. I think if you have an open mind it will definitely be a much bigger opportunity. Will it ever be a fashion destination? It's not going to be New York or L.A. or London, but it will be a destination for additional retail to grow from a fashion point of view — I already see that starting to happen.

A look from the John Varvatos 

spring 2015 show in Milan

Photo: Imaxtree

You've cast a number of big-name musicians in your ad campaigns —  Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson, Franz Ferdinand, Jimmy Page. Who would you want to have in a campaign that you haven't yet?

I’d love to have Jack White, he’s the one outstanding musician. We have a list of people that want to be in it — we no longer really have to ask because it’s become such an iconic campaign. But Jack White’s one person who is a fan and wears the clothes but he’s never done anything at all connected commercially, so he’s a tougher one to [get]. I think he’s such an innovator and he’s very rebellious. He’s a musical genius and our campaigns have always been about these iconic artists that created their own path, and he’s one of the leaders of all time. 

What's next expansion-wise?

More stores. San Diego in a few weeks, we have our fourth store coming up the beginning of next year at the World Trade Center in New York, and by then we’ll be around 26 stores. We’re also going to Palo Alto, so we have those things planned for 2016. Continuing to grow on the global side, we’re discussing stores in the Middle East and Russia and we’re now in Bangkok and looking to expand in the Far East.

Is retail or wholesale growing more quickly?

Percentage-wise, we’re about 60 percent vertical retail and 40 percent wholesale, both growing between 20 and 30 percent a year.

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Alexander Wang & Balenciaga Are Officially Over

Alexander Wang and Balenciaga are calling it quits after two-and-a-half years of going steady. Wang was tapped as creative director for the storied French fashion house in December 2012, and he had some very large shoes to fill — Nicolas Ghesquiere left after 15 strong years to join Louis Vuitton. Earlier this month, speculation mounted about whether Balenciaga’s parent company, Kering, would renew Wang’s contract, and the company confirmed today that it’s parting ways with the designer. His last Balenciaga show will be on October 2 during Paris Fashion Week. 

‘It’s been an incredible experience to work with a couture house in Paris. I am honored to have had the opportunity to work for this historical maison,” Wang said in a statement. “I would like to thank the brilliant team at Balenciaga for their collaboration and for what we have accomplished together, and I am looking forward to taking my own brand to its next level of growth."

Besides a formal statement, Wang took a thoroughly modern approach to saying farewell to Balenciaga via Twitter and Instagram.

So who will replace Wang? It might be a relative unknown, as Balenciaga could go the route of another major Kering-owned brand, Gucci, which opted to promote its head of accessories and a 13-year vet of the label, Alessando Michele, to the creative-director role in January. The reviews have been pretty kind so far. Kering is “open to considering a lesser-known, hidden talent for the plum post [at Balenciaga], emboldened by the positive feedback and outpouring of goodwill” that Michele’s promotion ushered in, according to WWD. It could be a behind-the-scenes star at Balenciaga (or someone from another brand in Kering’s luxury portfolio, like Bottega Veneta, Christopher Kane, or Stella McCartney). One name that’s been thrown into the mix is buzzy 25-year-old designer Simon Porte Jacquemus. 

The wild-card hire, like Michele’s appointment at Gucci, happens all too infrequently in an industry that tends to shuffle the same few marquee talents among creative-director gigs. Wang’s role at Balenciaga came as a surprise, too, but mostly because the designer seemed like a boy wonder for such a venerable house (and because of his eponymous line’s edgy, “downtown” vibe, which no doubt helped him score the job — not because he was some unknown industry entity). 

As for why it didn’t work? It probably isn’t a performance issue, judging by the numbers. Balenciaga is currently profitable, with revenues of $387 million. “The dynamic growth of the brand over the last years bears testimony to his successful creative work,” Balenciaga president and CEO, Isabelle Guichot, said in a statement. 

Could it have been the burnout effect of trying to juggle too much? Wang’s namesake brand is as hot as ever, and his shuttling between his eponymous brand's HQ, based in his NYC home turf, and Balenciaga’s Paris atelier, while it sounds completely glamorous, was probably exhausting. The reviews were good, starting with Wang's very first collection for the house, though they weren’t stellar. 

He also could be opting to focus on making his own brand even bigger, sort of like a younger version of Marc Jacobs when he ended his creative-director stint at LVMH to double down on his namesake brand. Wang has been seeking investment to grow his brand for the past year, and the search could be ending soon: Business of Fashion says that “according to a source familiar with the talks, the pool of potential investors recently narrowed to one.” 

Stay tuned for news on Balenciaga’s next creative director. We’re rooting for an under-the-radar type to take over. Fashion could use more of those refreshing “Wait, who?” moments.

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Rod Stewart and Kanye West pose for Alexander Wang, met’s Harold Koda to retire

Kanye West for Alexander Wang x DoSomething

Photo: Steven Klein

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These are the stories making headlines in fashion on Tuesday

Rod Stewart, Kanye West pose for Alexander Wang x DoSomething

If you thought Jeremy Scott was the American designer with the most celebrity friends, guess again. To promote a collaboration with youth social advocacy group DoSomething, Alexander Wang was able to wrangle 38 high-profile buddies — including Rod Stewart, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Kristen Wiig, Pamela Anderson, Tyga, and a host of top models — to pose for Steven Klein in the shirts and hoodies he made for the organization. {Alexander Wang}

Harold Koda to retire next year

After 15 years leading the Costume Institute at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harold Koda, 65, has decided to retire in early 2016. The bespectacled head curator says his exit will be an easy transition thanks to curator Andrew Bolton and their team of 30. For now, however, he continues to work on the upcoming exhibition "Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style," opening in November. {WWD}

The Arrivals debuts fall collection

The Arrivals, a direct-to-consumer outerwear brand favored by more than a few fashion editors, has launched its third collection — for fall — on its site, with prices ranging from $245 (for a denim jacket) to $885 (for a black leather jacket). In particular, we're eyeing a black leather moto number with a lamb shearling collar and a clean-cut unisex parka. {The Arrivals}

Kering nears sale of Sergio Rossi

Italian shoe brand Sergio Rossi may soon be parting ways with its parent company, Kering. According to unnamed sources, Kering is in "advanced talks" for a sale to private equity firm Investindustrial that could take place "as soon as next month." {Bloomberg}

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GIVENCHY TO OPEN NEW YORK FASHION WEEK SHOW TO THE PUBLIC

Givenchy fall 2015 

Photo: Imaxtree

On Sept. 11, Riccardo Tisci will bring Givenchy to New York Fashion Week for the first time, coinciding with the opening of the house's Manhattan flagship on Madison Avenue. But Tisci is changing the game even further by opening the show to the general public, offering free tickets for fans and fashion students on a first-come, first-served basis.

According to WWD, Givenchy is allotting 1,200 tickets for spectators, and is working with the City of New York to distribute them online beginning Wednesday, Sept. 2 at 10 a.m at givenchyNYFW15.com. The label has set aside 280 of those passes for fashion students and faculty at FIT, Parsons, Pratt Institute and the High School for Fashion Industries. Ticket holders will sit separately from industry members and celebrities, who will be positioned in a raised viewing area. And while the venue for Givenchy's event will not be announced until closer to the show, the buzz is already beginning to build: Tisci has introduced a dedicated hashtag (#GRTnyc17) to accompany America-themed posts on both his personal and on Givenchy's social media channels. 

Tisci, a bona fide celebrity designer with over 940,000 Instagram followers and a host of high-powered friends, is one of the most active French creative directors on social media. He makes a concerted effort to connect with his fans, which makes the planned public showing an especially natural fit. While ticketed fashion events are not exactly new — think "Fashion Rocks!" at the Barclay's Center — it's extremely rare for such an of-the-moment, top-tier brand to open its doors in such a way, outside of an online livestream or similar broadcast. We're very curious to see how Givenchy's experiment plays out.

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The ’90s Are Back? Sarah Mower Argues It’s Just Basic Math

Fashion people never believe that our reasons for liking things come down to something as simple and predictable as math. It’s all in our instincts, right? But there’s one simple algorithm that neatly explains why a rampant nostalgia for the nineties is running through the zeitgeist now. All you do is take today’s date, 2015, and subtract 25 (the age of today’s rising designers). Result: 1990, of course!

There’s a coming of age in which every generation finds itself reminiscing about its childhood, pondering what fashion was like in the days they can barely remember. Christian Dior, born in 1905, romanticized the Edwardiana of his mother’s day. Yves Saint Laurent, who was born in 1936, looked back on the forties. Tom Ford, born in 1961, has been working through his obsession with the sixties and early seventies for his whole career.

And so it goes, for today’s nineties kids. What are those vague memories of Mommy making sandwiches in a slip dress while you played in front of Power Rangers, Full House, and Pokémon? What was that black pantsuit she was always wearing when she rushed home from work to tuck you into bed? Do you remember sticking your feet into her New Balance trainers and staggering around her bedroom as a toddler? Verifying these semi-remembered images is tantalizingly difficult. Nineties fashion reporting lies mostly beyond the reach of Google, which was only created in 1998.

But lo! There are plenty of people who do remember the nineties out there—the designers who are now in their mid-40s and at the top of the tree. Apply the math again (subtract 25 from 2015) and we discover that Phoebe Philo, Nicolas Ghesquière, Raf Simons, Stella McCartney, Riccardo Tisci, and Gucci’s new creative director, Alessandro Michele, among others, were all in their 20s—out there, living it up at raves and underground clubs—in the nineties.

It’s perfectly logical, then, that so many references to the decade have started to resonate through fashion now. On the one hand, there’s a generation of designers growing up with a rediscovered reverence for nineties Galliano, who are researching David Sims, Craig McDean, and Corinne Day’s photographs of fresh-faced Kate Moss, Kristen McMenamy, Emma Balfour, and the “waifs.” And on the other, there are the eyewitnesses who are looking back on a time in their lives that represented spontaneity, freedom, individuality, and the thrill of ransacking the cheapest racks at the flea market for something cool to throw together.

Nothing ever looks the same the second time around, obviously. Once you’re keyed into it, though, what else but nineties teen spirit can explain the near absence of makeup and the flowing, undone hair at the Fall 2015 shows? Why is Alessandro Michele making such a hit with young customers, straight off the bat, by filtering Gucci through a geeky, beanie-hatted, downplayed, almost market-stall vintage-y sensibility? Aren’t Phoebe Philo’s satin lingerie-dresses with their ribbon-tie belts telling us something? Or the slip dresses Rag & Bone crammed on top of pants (so nineties style) in its show?

When it comes to young designers, the homages are even more frank. Vetements’s Demna Gvasalia and his collective of friends are enjoying runaway success rechanneling the deconstructed attitude of nineties-era Martin Margiela. Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida, showing greasy grunge hair, flashes of metallic gold Helmut Lang-ish tops, and rough-cut Christian Lacroix floral brocades, admit to serving a salad of nineties references, chopped up from copies of The Face and i-D they never saw the first time around. So popular is it with girls, they can hardly keep up.

But let’s cut this situation another way. Is this nineties feeling a fad, a mere mechanical function of the date on the clock? That would be to discount the emotion running beneath it, the instinct factor that distinguishes a seasonal blip from something with the makings of a movement. Combine the impulses of two generations—the one that has interest in obeying existing fashion rules, and the other that may be kicking against working within them—and what do we have? Something about what’s happening—the plea for casualness, youth, and a bit of raw-edged reality—reads as a deeply felt backlash against the Photoshop-perfect, relentlessly paced fashion system.

In the nineties there was more space to be human; ideas and personalities had time to develop. It was cool to be anonymous and just get on with your own thing with your friends. Sometimes we need to look back to go forward. Maybe it’s as basic as that.

Helmut Lang Spring 1997 / Marques ‘ Almeida Fall 2015

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of firstVIEW.com; Courtesy of Marcus Tondo / Indigitalimages.com

Maison Margiela Spring 2001 / Vetements Fall 2015

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of firstVIEW.com; Courtesy of Marcus Tondo / Indigitalimages.com

Perry Ellis Spring 1993 / 3.1 Phillip Lim Fall 2015

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of Condé Nast Archive; Marcus Tondo / Indigitalimages.com

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