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"  What inspired you to release a book now? 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. I have tons of them since I started with the company. And I was sitting with somebody a few years back and they saw what I had there and they said &amp;#039;you need to do a book&amp;#039;. And within a few days I was meeting with publishers and everybody was super psyched about the concept. How did your notebook become a full story? I had to really sit down and think about how to lay out a book and how to tell a story. It&amp;#039;s a take on every aspect of dressing, from your hair to footwear to scarves and tailoring and leather and all these other things. Why do you think, and this is a loaded question, fashion and rock are so intertwined? Well it&amp;#039;s pretty easy really. First rock in the &amp;#039;50s was inspired by fashion, and fashion became inspired by rock. It&amp;#039;s quite an incestuous collaboration between the two. They both very much connect with pop culture, so that&amp;#039;s the real thing. Now a lot of rock stars want to be designers, and you know designers want to be rock stars\u2026 Who are some of your top most fashionable rock stars? In today&amp;#039;s world I would say\u2026Kings of Leon, The Killers. Bruno Mars is pretty fashionable. Gary Clarck Junior, who was also in our ad with Jimmy Page, is a super super stylish guy. So those are some of my stand out favorites from a quick snapshot of style from the present. Rock style seems pretty consistent, do you think it has evolved? You know, it&amp;#039;s kind of what comes around goes around a bit, so it&amp;#039;s sort of an evolution. When you look, you start to see this dotted line that connects Lenny Kravitz to Jimmy Hendrix, and Kings of Leon to Jeff Beck and different bands in the &amp;#039;60s and &amp;#039;70s. So I think just like designers are inspired by many different things and people on the street and so on, rock stars are also inspired by other stars of the past, both musically and stylistically. If you had to pick your top rock decade, what would it be? The &amp;#039;70s for sure. In the early 70s, coming out of the 60s, it was very hippy or it was very uniform, like The Beatles all wearing the same suit. Into the 70s it became much more about a personal style. You had the glam period, which was a lot of fun, and then you went into punk. In that 10 year period it was so stylistically interesting, whereas the &amp;#039;80s was just bad in general. In the &amp;#039;90s you had grunge and simplicity, so it&amp;#039;s probably the most\u2014musically and stylistically\u2014 that was ever going on in one decade. Obviously you talk about Detroit a lot in the book, and the old CBGB is where your NYC store is now, do you think there is a city right now that is having a rock moment? Well Austin for sure is very much a music town, it&amp;#039;s not just a rock town. It&amp;#039;s everything from country to Americana to alternative to whatever, but it&amp;#039;s really one of the most musical towns or cities in America, and it&amp;#039;s pretty amazing. Nashville is also. Everyone thinks of it as country, but it&amp;#039;s so much more than country. But if I had to pick one I would say that it&amp;#039;s Austin. You often use rock stars in your campaigns. What do you think rock stars embody for you that your average actor or model doesn&amp;#039;t. Well first of all, I guess actors could be, but they&amp;#039;re generally not, bad boys. Since musicians are rebellious musically and stylistically, I think having a little bad boy in you in a very iconic way is what makes sense for us. Each one of the artists that we&amp;#039;ve had in our campaigns either started a genre or had a huge impact on the genre, and all of those artists&amp;#039; music transcends decades and generations. If a guy were going to buy one piece to look like a rock star but still look stylish on the street, what would that piece be? Well, you know, I&amp;#039;d have to say it&amp;#039;s a pair of boots. I mean, we do pretty amazing boots, and we&amp;#039;re really known for that. I think if I said a leather jacket, you know it&amp;#039;s\u2026 Not for everyone? Yeah, and I also think that it&amp;#039;s not necessarily rock star. So many of the musicians that we work with, they wear suits and they dress differently. It&amp;#039;s not just about a leather jacket and a pair of jeans, but they all love boots. Everyone loves boots, and they&amp;#039;re very timeless and they transcend as well. John Varvatos Rock in Fashion, $60, johnvarvatos.com. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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