“But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace soubriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona.”
Rock is dead?
Hmm, I don’t know? I don’t think that rock really has the ability to die. What is rock? Nowadays, it seems to be “a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate.” They said Guy Fawkes was dead, yet somehow every 5th of November thousands of his lookalikes gather all around the world.
The truth is, John Varvatos resurrected rock & roll fashion rather swimmingly. You can almost see the spirit of rock ascending, quite literally, with it’s ghosts of years past silhouetted right up against the purposely grimed walls of this venue! Let’s face it: rock is fashion’s younger, snazzier brother that has been turned into a pariah by the fads-to-be. Quite frankly, seeing all of those svelte Varvatos-ian models at this last J.V. show in NYC—wearing a plethora of Wicker Man sacrificial/orgy-partaking animal masks—makes one ponder the brand’s rather sarcastic question to begin with: is rock really dead?
You may indeed call this maestro “V.” For what he does is take the truisms of past and present and splices them into one epic hodgepodge of decadent proportions. In executing said action, V (Varvatos) oversees that symphonic, newly structured elements are manifested, thereby exhibiting the rare inclinations of a talented virtuoso! The senses get taken out for a joyride, as all of the leather and lace gets merged into a harmonious rhapsody with the Rock backdrop. This is synesthesia, baby! You see the Rolling Stones in those jackets. You see The Clash in those skinny jeans. You see Sid Vicious under that naughty little bovine helmet!
Like fashion, can rock evolve/devolve back into itself and come out smelling like a basket of Georgia peaches? Can Rock eat itself from its own tail, like the proverbial Cosmic Serpent, only to implode back into a transient, amorphous new entity? Can a quasi-patronizing coffin, with a cadaver donning a pair of gorgeous ruby red motorcycle boots, really ever die?
John Varvatos has the propensity to redefine the fabrics of fashion by splicing in a cornucopia of quirky, yet established, motifs. Strolling through the labyrinthine show, from a figurative and literal perspective, you really had no idea of what was going to pounce out at you at any given moment. The myriads of mannequins and models wearing raccoon, bear, eagle, bat, horse, and zebra masks made you feel like you were in a bad 1970’s indie horror film. The David Bowie and Pink Floyd lyrics splattered on the walls, in a Jackson Pollack/Banksy hybridization, made you feel like you were in the middle of Bristol, U.K., in the mid-1980’s. The sexy little boy toys in avant-garde headdresses shuffling decks of cards and performing magic tricks made you reminisce about the good ole vaudevillian days in the Village—before came the ringing bells of the first gentrification! Oh, how the requiems played their songs, when seeing those big bottomed televisions, stacked up, one on top of the other, like something out of Videodrome or perhaps an early 1990’s George Michael video.
There’s just something so comforting: about coming to terms with how intertwined rock and fashion really are. Hell, if you can somehow manage to pinpoint a reverberating flow in one, than the other is sure to ‘Butterfly Effect’ into more proven principles. Varvatos is a master in synergizing all of the components of not just the physical properties of rock and fashion, but the ambiance interloped betwixt them.
That’s what aura is! This is how one fittingly alchemizes an essence. And, as with most fundamental qualities of rock and fashion (the fun and successfully demonstrated ones), an ambiance, no matter how seemingly dark, shadowy, and perplexed, tends to reconstruct itself into chic, evolved qualities that are savored by all who experience them. Do we truly believe that “rock is dead!?” Or is rock simply taking a beauty nap? The answer, my friends, is right in front of us.
Yes, you may indeed, for all intensive purposes, call him “V.”
By Andre Zemnovitsch
