John Varvatos

I like someone who has a little bad boy in them, a little edge.

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.

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.

My passion in life, besides my family, was always music. From the time I was a kid, I was obsessed. I'm like the ultimate fan.

When you do men's wear, it's less about thinking outside the box than about pushing the walls of the box outward. Men want to be evolutionary, not revolutionary.

When I started working in fashion, I didn't have money to buy photographs, so I'd Xerox pictures from magazines and put them in notebooks. When I'd start a collection, I'd sit with my old notebooks and look through them for inspiration.

When I think of artists that I would have loved to work with, it's Jimi Hendrix. And Steve McQueen. He's not a rock star, but he's kind of a rock star to me.

I always talk about a great-fitting pair of jeans. Girls are concerned about the way their butt looks in a pair of jeans, and I think a guy having a really great-fitting pair of jeans is just as important.

Sometimes, we need an obstacle to challenge us and push us further than we would if things were always status quo. I'd say one example is the market crashing. It's like, just when we started to get into a rhythm, everything changed! But, it taught us a great deal about how we do business and how we can improve.

My vision is the ability to design clothes for a man who wants to create his own style and doesn't want to dress like he's in uniform, to look like the guy in the ad, or to feel like he has to put it together that way.

I believe that if you think about what style means, you won't become a fashion victim.

Canada - they won't like me saying this, but it's really like it's a part of Michigan, that area.

The thing about the basics is they don't really change - it's the details and the proportions that change. The shirt may be cut slimmer or looser, the suit might be darker or lighter, the sneakers might not have laces, but you're still talking about shirts and suits and sneakers.

I never wanted to be the face of the brand. You haven't seen me in my own ads. You don't see my logo all over my clothes. From the beginning, I wanted the clothes to stand on their own.

When a man's suit fits, when the construction is beautiful, when the sewing and fabrics are there... in the end, you'll look the best in it.

I shop a lot online... and just the ease of it makes a lot more sense.

The great thing about living in New York is the constant change of things. It inspires me to keep moving, push forward, question ideas.

Music has always been a dominant force in my life. As a young kid, it was a way for me to escape everyday life.

Success is a funny thing. It means different things to different people. For me, I am always pleased when people connect to our brand. It means we are executing in a manner that speaks to a wide variety of businesses.

A lot of designers become hot, attend every party, and then you don't hear about them again.