Varvatos Talks Brand Building at Malibu Debut
Elegantly disheveled sneakers and suits definitely not like your father’s pin stripes—these are just a couple aspects of John Varvatos’ rolling brand machine. When the award-winning designer (he was honored with three awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in the past eight years) visited the Oct. 4 debut of his self-named boutique at the Malibu Country Mart, he played party host and dealt with the omnipresent question of how to keep a well-known brand fresh and new. Instinct might be the only protection for a brand’s integrity, he said.
“When I feel the product being compromised, that’s when I know it is spread too thin,” he said, wearing his company’s washed-suede peacoat.
Retail is one of the growing areas for his New York–based company, a division of Greensboro, N.C.–based VF Corp. The Malibu location is his eighth boutique. This year, he also opened a San Francisco boutique and a Varvatos store in the space that formerly housed CBGB, the New York rock club that served as the headquarters for the punk movement in the 1970s. With CBGB’s heritage in mind, the designer said he would consider opening another West Coast store in a similar space. “[It should be] an old haunt to do music and give back to the community,” he said, describing the unscheduled venture.
A community focus was the template for the Malibu store’s grand-opening party. The members of Los Angeles rock band Camp Freddy were the stars of Varvatos’ fund-raiser for Malibu Legacy Park, a 15-acre nature park located adjacent to the Country Mart and upcoming retail center Malibu Lumberyard. The band played an acoustic set. Current Varvatos ad campaign star and rocker Perry Farrell also sat in with the band to sing the 1975 Bad Company song “Feel Like Makin’ Love.”
The 2,200-square-foot Malibu Varvatos store is located adjacent to a space housing 7 For All Mankind, which also is owned by VF Corp. The Malibu Varvatos store offers John Varvatos *USA and the designer’s self-named flagship collection, John Varvatos.
Varvatos’ eyewear and fragrance help round out the merchandise, along with a bit of his casual collection, Converse by John Varvatos. Store price points range from $265 for woven shirts to $2,995 for a leather bomber jacket with shearling lining.
The store also contains clues to Varvatos’ music obsession. On sale is audio equipment from the 1970s. The music connection will soon be ratcheted up a notch in November, when Varvatos launches a program on Sirius XM Radio called “Born in Detroit.”
Another one of Varvatos’ new ventures was not in the store. Daughter Thea Catherine was born Aug. 17. —Andrew Asch
