John Varvatos Sparks Revolution in Fashion Nostalgia

John-Varvatos-Sunglasses-Bio1

John Varvatos was born February 1, 1966, which means he missed the Baby Boom by 2 years.

Note: Baby Boom lasted from 1946-1964.

This notwithstanding, he captures the spirit of my generation better than any designer in memory. Period.

~~~

As I gotten older I seem to grow closer to my roots.

I guess it’s true what they say about early impressions being the strongest.

Most therapists would be willing to corroborate this for $200.00, by the way.

Anyway, my deepest passions were those rooted in music, specifically, rock ‘n’ roll.

Why this is I don’t know, because while others were off playing soccer, I sat in dark rooms with electric guitars and vinyl records, playing and replaying Clapton licks, among others.

My dorm room was plastered with glossy posters of Ozzy, Zeppelin, The Who, Cream, Hendrix and other musical gods of the day.

Empty packs of guitar strings were scattered all over the place, picks even worse.

I think it’s safe to say my adolescence was experienced through the fulcrum of music.

Then time passed, decades, and here I find myself with the same music, the same string and keyed instruments, and library of music I can’t live without.

So one day I’m walking through The Galleria in Houston when I happen upon the new John Varvatos store.

Feeling transported back to a place where it all started is to grossly understate the experience.

Joplin’s “Down On Me” was in the air, rock biographies neatly stacked on shelves under framed film photographs of rock stars.

and the clothing!

Wow.

Seriously?

Could this really be?

Did I actually find my long lost home in the world of John Varvatos?

At this writing my closet looks like his showroom, with a few exceptions, very few.

Once I got my hands on those threads 90% of my clothing went the way of the wind.

Finally a designer was channeling the same vibe.

Though my career has been spent as a photographer and writer, nothing keeps me more tethered to myself than music.

Obviously, I’m not alone.

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Brilliant ad. Generations merged.

Fitness Guru and Author, Shawn Phillips, Talks “Balanced Life”

ass-beachhttp://www.mystrengthforlife.com/relationship-with-perfect-physique-time/

Shawn and I are Facebook friends.

We have never met, though I had long-standing professional relationship with his brother, Bill, as a cover and editorial photographer for Muscle Media and Energy magazines.

Shawn posted this essay on Facebook recently, and I decided to share it here.

It speaks to the wisdom of age and how it challenges our perceptions of life and how many of us live it.

~~~

Everyone already knows the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.

To the faithful, I’m preaching to the choir.

But like everything else in life – and I mean everything – we reach a point of diminishing returns.

Training 2 hours a day, 7 days a week, AND eating perfectly, AND getting enough rest and recovery tend to sideline everything else, like family, friends, and loved ones who will eventually forget your name in the process.

The fact is there isn’t enough time in a day to do everything you want to do if other people in your life mean anything to you.

All those hours in the gym, on the track, in the pool mean what if you have nothing else in your life?

Your world gets really small, really fast.

This becomes more obvious at middle age when the time available to balance health and family are on a short fuse.

The time have come to reassess priorities if you want to live a fulfilling life.

Middle age is a wake-up call for men who’ve lived their lives for themselves: their goals, their objectives…themselves.

It’s fine when you’re in your 20’s and chasing a gold medal, or in your 30’s 80-hour weeks and endless travel are the only way to financial freedom.

But once you hit your middle 40’s – and beyond – you realize that the most important things in life involve people other than yourself.

In other words “being 7% bodyfat, ripped and living your life obsessed with fitness, exercise and some radical diet” is not a panacea.

Coming from a guy recognized as the epitome of fitness, this is something worth pondering.

THE GYM WORLD

At my gym there are more exercise addicted middle-aged men than there are gold-diggers, which is saying a lot in a town like Houston.

These men live for themselves all day, all night until one morning while on another in an endless series of runs, a torn Achilles tendon flips the switch and all they have left is a wheelchair in an empty room.

I’ve seen it more times than I can count.

Most of these men are single, divorced, living alone.

No cats. No dogs. Nothing to slow them down, interfere with the seamless obsession with me.

To those of us who’ve been around a while, we know the symptoms well.

The carrying on about how “working out is better than the alternative,” and “addiction is in the eye of the beholder” crap is as transparent as an open door.

Addicts with ever-shrinking lives memorize every excuse in the book to justify what they do.

But in the end, they’re talking to themselves because the rest of us have left destiny to do what it does best, which is pummel the weak.

As Shawn says [and I’ll leave it to his article to elaborate], “if you are using fitness to chase self-esteem vs. using self-esteem to fuel your fitness, you are on the infinite treadmill to nowhere.”

I finally leaned the meaning of this around the time I hit my 50th birthday and landed in a hospital with a high fever and sky-high liver enzymes due to over-exercise.

My life looked a lot like the people I describe.

I was told to stay out of the gym for a month, get a trainer who could help me get my workouts back in balance…and maybe see a shrink for what was obviously exercise addiction.

I was single, self-obsessed, spiritually lost.

Sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom before we can land on our feet.

Long story short, I now cross-train with weights 3 days a week for 1 hour, not 3.

I do 1 hour of cardio, stretching and foam rolling on the days in between, and take a day off.

I still eat well, but I allow myself to enjoy a glass of wine, french toast, and yes, the occasional caramel chocolate treat.

And since I’m not working out all day long, I also have time to spend time with the woman in my life and our zoo of animals.

It took a long time for me to learn and appreciate the art of balance, but now that I have I have never felt so fulfilled, or been more productive.

It’s amazing how much time you can waste chasing your tail.

Thanks for that, Shawn.

Ronnie and Sally Wood at The Races

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I’ve covered this couple in another blog [search bar], but I thought it was worth further mention, given Sally Wood’s illuminating comments.

Among them:

Speaking of their age gap, Sally told the Telegraph: ‘Um, well, I know it’s there. And I wish it wasn’t, but it is. I think I had to say “I can’t do this because of the age”, or I just had to let it go and take it all on board. At no point, years ago, did I say to myself: “I think I’ll go out with someone twice my age”, but that is what has happened.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3288914/Wild-horses-couldn-t-Rolling-Stones-rocker-Ronnie-Wood-68-away-wife-Sally-37-cheer-stallion-Cheltenham-races.html

Up Next!

One Reason Older Men Like Me Work Out

The guy you see in the foreground is me.

Directly behind me is a 9-year-old kid –– my competitor.

We will both perform what is referred to as an “icky-shuffle” that most know as ladder work.

This particular movement requires a lot of focus and agility rarely seen in males my age, but even more notably — HIS!

Yea, I was just as blown away.

Rock on, kid!

Why Some Stars Age Badly?

beautiful-stars-who-aged-horribly4Axl Rose, 53

You can blame a crappy appearance on the passage of a few years.

But you can also blame yourself for how you spent them.

In other words, “You make the bed you sleep in…” as my grandfather, Shelley, used to say.

Unfortunately, Axl Rose started out with a bed in complete disarray.

Thankfully, his voice and ability to write memorable music were enough to carry him through a lot of the turmoil.

But he is still a tragic result of his past.

So did misfortune cause him age badly?

Indirectly, yes.

But with help, most of us are salvageable.

In his case, he was either unable – or unwilling – to overcome the demons that laid waste to his childhood, and what we now see is a reflection of how he feels about himself.

There are many talented celebrities who have aged incredibly well.

In every instance, though, it’s because they took great care of themselves –– not because they visited a Devil’s Crossroads or were born divine.

Sting comes to mind as he always does in these narratives.

Aging is not a death sentence in the context of appearance.

It’s a series of choices.

I bring this up because MSN is fond of writing attention-grabbing headlines about how badly some celebrities have aged, like they were somehow struck down by God while shopping at Whole Foods.

Does a 53-year-old man look like he did at 22?

Of course not.

But many would argue that an exemplary 53-year-old actually constitutes an improvement.

A few lines, harder features, a fit frame, success, maturity, wisdom, knowledge all combined can equal a far more appealing individual.

While youth and beauty are synonymous in absolute terms, aging well balances the scales because it is one of life’s consummate achievements.

Just ask anyone who’s ever won an Oscar.

BULLET POINTS

Aging badly is most often tied to two things:

1] Obesity

2] Over-indulgence in plastic surgery.

Both are tied directly to self-esteem, and both are treatable psychiatric disabilities.

There is a third possibility, but delusion doesn’t count.

Affluent Older Men Remain Targets of Scorn for Dating Beautiful Young Women […as if we give a crap]

CIDRpEqWcAAOIPoDuncan Bannatyne, 66 & Nigora Whitehorn, 35

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/11695827/Why-does-everyone-hate-it-when-rich-old-men-date-young-attractive-women.html

The fact that Bannatyne is rich and his girlfriend a native of Uzbekistan is all people need to know before piling on.

The familiar refrain from women is laced with the same tired adjectives: ““Cringe” “puke” “vomit” “creepy” in any order.

From young men it’s the all-too-familiar realization that “rich guys still get the girls.”

And feminists consider it a complete betrayal: “Women prostitute themselves and somehow betray those women who, for example, choose to tough it out in the workplace.”

I understand the vitriol, the envy.

I understand that it’s life out of order, and that it is threatening to those who want a predictable, linear story.

But that world is long gone, except in smaller enclaves outside of big cities where groups like Quakers live as people did 200 years ago.

From all of these stories – and there are more than I could possibly count in a lifetime – there are a few things I’d like to share with the detractors:

To young men —

1] Rather than hurling invective at your older brethren, you should relish the fact that in exchange for a life well lived, you earn bigger dividends down the road.

To young women —

2] For those with enough youth and beauty to barter, the 60-hour work week is a thing of the past.

To feminists —

3] Life’s a food chain.

Baby Boomers Edge Closer to Oblivion

o-FREYA-900Photo: Freya Najade

If You’re Lucky You Get Old is an exhibition by photographer Freya Najade, chronicling the first thing she learned from the elderly people she visited whilst traveling the United States. At a time where the elderly are ostracized, or, in Najade’s words, ‘hardly seem to exist’, conjuring images of ‘wrinkles, disease and decay’, the artist was surprised that the people she met and photographed were not only proud of their age but were ‘still falling in love and breaking up.

Many of you will find these images difficult to look at.

They are largely UN-retouched, straightforward, brutally honest.

In short, not something we see a lot of in in a culture obsessed with youth and beauty.

Most older people are invisible to us, irrelevant, and for all intents and purposes, gone.

But as the oldest Baby Boomers edge closer to 70, we’re about to fall victim to the very culture we created.

Of course, we don’t all age at the same rate.

This is a result of our lifestyle choices as you will see.

~~~

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3135853/Richard-Gere-s-new-squeeze-Alejandra-Silva-32-displays-body-tiny-purple-bikini-cosying-65-year-old-actor-yacht-Italy.html

Richard Gere is decades younger than the man in the above photo, but you’d only know this from a birth certificate.

Unlike many men his age, Gere has chosen to let himself go.

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This is a choice, not an inevitable destiny.

That he is dating the stunning Alejandra Silva, 32, mother of one, only adds to the cliche that love is only as deep as one’s investment portfolio.

So let’s take a look at other men his age and then let you decide what constitutes “old”

If any of the following 5 men were seen in the company of a 32 year old woman, you’d never hear a word from critics who claim “it’s all money, honey,” followed closely by “Ewwww,” and, of course, the old standbys, “Creepy” and “cringe-worthy.”

1] Sting, 63

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2] Bruce Springsteen, 65

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3] Samuel L. Jackson, 66

article-0-03DFE9B40000044D-947_634x814Jeff Bridges, 65

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Kurt Russell, 64

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In this case, I chose rich, famous actors who’s job it is to stay fit. 

But many civilians [men not known in the context of popular culture] who happen to be in their middle 60’s are even fitter.

Men who practice Crossfit, for example, are some of the fittest guys I have ever known, shaming men half their age.

It’s all a choice.

How much effort we’re willing to put forth to be the very best that we can be?

For many, it’s very little: Consume a few veggies [when absolutely, positively necessary], do a little walking…and maybe add a glass of water between shots of vodka.

This is normal, average.

For the rest of us, life is a full-on crucible filled with challenges no one ever thought we’d be strong enough to face.

But here we are in the midst of a never-ending war of attrition, doing what we have to do to stand tall in the face of adversity.

Talk about relevance.

Staying fit is the very definition of it, closely followed closely by money.

Of course, there is disagreement about the order, as evidenced by Richard Gere.

Elder Statesman, Rod Stewart, Enjoying Life, Love and Relevance at 70

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The most successful homegrown solo star of all time, worth upwards of £350 million, Stewart has enjoyed 31 hit singles, a dozen of which, including Maggie May, You’re In My Heart, Sailing, Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?, Baby Jane and The First Cut Is The Deepest, are incontestable classics.

Yea, he missed the Baby Boom Gen by 1 year, but most of us “youngster” Boomers still consider him a member of the club.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/home/event/article-3264865/Rod-Stewart-Viagra-money-music-Madonna-sex-70.html

Rod Stewart does not require introduction. You already know who he is, what he’s done, what he thinks about beautiful women, wine and song.

He is, for all intents and purposes, the very definition of relevance for a man who just turned 70.

How does he do it, keep going the way he does, feeling so alive?

1] He is fueled by a vast array of success that has paved the way for healthy self-esteem at his stage of life.

Note: There is a direct correlation between self esteem and perceived accomplishment.

2] He is happily married to a beautiful young woman who has had his back for over 2 decades.

Note: There is a direct correlation between a happy family life and longevity.

3] He continues to work, to produce to be engaged in life from every angle imaginable: Music, family, sports, car collecting, real estate…etc…

Note: The moment a man retires, his descent escalates.

4] He stay fit and healthy with help from a personal trainer, and watches his alcohol consumption, which at one time was plenty enough to sink a battleship.

Note: Maintaining physical health is one of life’s great challenges for older men, and also it’s most rewarding.

5] He appreciates where he is in life and maintains balance.

Note: Balance is key to a long, healthy life. Without it you’re just a rat on a wheel.

~~~

I know that many of you will say “Yea, I’m sure it is nice being a rich rock star with homes on several continents. No surprise he’s doing well!”

Points taken.

But many extraordinarily successful rock stars overdosed before their 30th birthdays.

5 Steps to “Relevance” at Any Age

hollywoodvampires1] Be a famous rock ‘n roll musician

2] Be a famous actor

3] Write a bestselling novel that becomes a blockbuster movie.

4] Create a new social media platform, like Facebook.

5] Be a famous talk show host, because that’s what talk show hosts are…

Okay, okay I get it. Not everyone is a multi-millionaire celebrity actor-rock star-writer-creator-talk show host….blah blah blah…

But understand that not being in one of the aforementioned categories constitutes being “nobody’ in the context of popular culture.

Seriously.

Of course, most thinking people know that “relevance” isn’t measured by popular culture, though graduate level courses may soon be required to clear up the confusion.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE PATHOGEN

Post something mildly controversial to any online article and you can count on someone responding with something along the lines of “Who are you?” “Go back to your dead end job!” “You’re a nobody! How much do you make?”

Of course, they could be addressing someone who discovered the cure for Tuberculosis, but it wouldn’t matter because they assume that people who do great things are on the cover of People Magazine, like the rest of the gods, beyond the breath and scope of man.

This is the voice of America’s collective unconscious: We are invisible. We don’t matter. No one cares.

This psycho-pathology then takes a dangerous turn: “I have to make them care. I have to make them notice me. I have to make myself matter [to them, not to me, because I can’t validate myself].”

Road rage is another manifestation of this nightmare: “You think I’m nobody? “Not for long, MF!”

Then the manifestos left by people who commit mass murder in schoolyards: “You will remember me. I will live forever!”

~~~

All of this is the back noise of our culture that affects people of all ages, races and creeds to one degree or another.

Take affluent older men, for example.

What makes them relevant if they happen not to fall into the aforementioned categories?

1] A desire – and ability to – engage people of all ages.

2] Staying in shape, serious shape.

3] Reading, listening, learning always.

4] Knowing technology, the lifeblood of our era. 

5] Refusing to babble on about artificial hips, aching joints, and dead and dying friends.

6] Challenging themselves every day, even if it’s sitting still and at peace for 5 minutes a day.

7] Throwing their shoulders back and moving forward like they mean it, not like someone’s dragging them.

8] Staying clear of convention when it suits them.

9] Going to therapy to help separate self-perception from delusion.

10] Not allowing other people to determine how they feel about themselves. 

People admire those who aren’t affected by other people, who live their own lives, true to themselves.

“There’s a wonderful sense of well-being that begins to circulate . . . up and down your spine. And you feel something that makes you almost want to smile. So what’s it like to be me? Ask yourself, ‘What’s it like to be me?’ The only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself that’s where home is.” Bill Murray in Rolling Stone interview

http://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/2014/11/06/bill-murray-worlds-regular-guy/

We can’t change our actual age, be we can certainly change the way we approach it.

I challenge destiny every day of my life.

I also challenge beliefs [my own included], tackle misconceptions, and don’t let life roll over me.

It will if you let it.

Remember, life is a food chain and you are dinner unless you matter more alive.