Relaxed Fit

"I think I make masculine clothes that have enough edge that even a fashion guy can find enough to push him," John Varvatos says, "but it's not so much that every piece has to be in your face." At right, clothes from his fall line. (Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post; Right: By Lucian Perki)

On that Thursday night in Washington, Varvatos sold a lot of velvet blazers -- the centerpiece of a perfect dinner ensemble for a bureaucrat who still daydreams about being a rocker.

Varvatos grew up in Allen Park, a modest suburb just outside Detroit. He didn't become part of the New York fashion industry and its attendant fanfare until he was in his early thirties. He was in his forties when he launched his own brand. "If I had been 25 or 30 doing this, I'd probably be out of business already," he says.

At Ralph Lauren, Varvatos learned about the business of fashion, about the importance of establishing a signature and not straying dramatically from it. "I learned about building a lifestyle brand," he says. Lauren "was never satisfied. He was always pushing the bar higher and higher. It was also about being a pain . . . about the fit. You have to be relentless.

"At Calvin it was like Marketing 101," he says. "At Calvin I had a lot of freedom. He wasn't involved day-to-day. Ralph has built this look and doesn't want to digress from it very far, which makes it hard to be exciting. Calvin was a little bit more of a chameleon."

Growing up in suburban Detroit, Varvatos spent a lot of time going to the big arena concerts downtown but also kept track of the small bands that played the local nightclubs -- some of them so lacking in pretense that they were tucked inside strip malls. The clubs were not so much cool as earnest. That unironic sincerity is one of the many traits that inform his approach to the fashion industry.

"He's very approachable. He's a midwestern boy," says Tobe's Morrison, who sat on a fashion industry panel with him. "I think he's very real and that's important for men. I think they can relate to him."

The Midwest "is very grounding," Varvatos says. "I go back and look at people and most people in those areas are not fashionistas. They want to look beautiful and well dressed. They look at fashion magazines, at editorial and say, 'I can't even see the clothes.'

"For me, it's about me being true to myself and not moving so far away from what we do. I think sometimes people are driven so much to be new, they lose their heritage and the personality they've been building," Varvatos says. "The thing I enjoy the most about reviews is when they say, 'It's very John Varvatos.' You need to continue to work at that.

"I don't need any logos if I have that," he says, "if I have that handwriting."