Varvatos rock aesthetic strikes a note at 51st Grammy Awards

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My Morning Jacket’s evening jackets were John Varvatos at the 51st Grammy Awards last night. The group was among the musical masses that turned out last night clad in clothes by the New York-based designer (whom we profiled earlier this year).

In addition, Dave Grohl turned out in a black, JV convertible collar tuxedo -- which just so happened to be the same thing Robert Plant performed in and was wearing on his third trip to the stage to receive the Grammy Award for best album with Alison Krauss (don’t these guys call each other to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen?).

Plant actually wore three different John Varvatos outfits over the course of the evening (and won a total of five Grammy Awards), arriving in a double-breasted, cotton/linen trench coat with antique buttons and a white V-neck T-shirt, and accepting the duo’s first two prizes of the night wearing a black leather biker jacket that made him look every inch the rocker (and made us long for the probably never-gonna-happen-with-Plant-on-board Led Zeppelin reunion).
But if such a reunion -- with Jason Bonham subbing in for his deceased dad John as he has in the past -- ever does come to pass (and if five Grammys on the mantle from collaborating with a bluegrass crooner don’t make you feel like you’ve grown musically, what does?), maybe Varvatos will get a chance to fulfill a dream. On a record-shopping jaunt at Amoeba Music back in October, I asked the designer, whose music-centric ad campaigns have included Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper and Franz Ferdinand, if he had one rock band from history he’d want to star in a fantasy ad campaign. He didn’t hesitate a millisecond:

‘I would have loved to have Led Zeppelin,’ he told me. ‘That was my very first concert when I was 14. It changed my life.’

-- Adam Tschorn

Top photo: My Morning Jacket arrives at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards wearing John Varvatos. By Frazer Harrison/Getty Images. Bottom photo: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on stage with their Grammy at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. By Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times.