Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx joins forces to create clothing line Joanne Blain,
Email to a friend Printer friendly Font: * * * * To Sixx - born Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna, Jr. - it all makes perfect sense. Fashion and rock “have always gone hand in hand,” he said in an e-mail interview. “Rock music has and always will be very rooted in image.
It became popular in the same era that every household in America started to have a television, so how could image and fashion not be an important component?” Gray, who grew up in the clothing business - her parents, Robert and Marie Gray, founded St. John in 1962 - didn’t always think music and fashion went hand in glove. “If you had asked me that four years ago when I was at St. John, I would have said ‘I’m not sure if they have any relationship,’ ” she said in a phone interview.
But she now thinks of rock and fashion as “completely fused together.” Sixx and Gray will show off the fruits of their collaboration Tuesday at an invitation-only event at Holt Renfrew’s downtown Vancouver store. Royal Underground’s lines for men and women feature everything from T-shirts to cashmere sweaters and tailored jackets, all with a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility and driven by graphic images. The spring collection has an Asian influence, featuring Chinese characters, dragons and peacocks.
Every collection also has a dose of whimsy, Gray says - such as the ruler stitched inside the fly of a pair of jeans from last year’s holiday collection. “That was Nikki’s idea,” Gray says. “The ruler is not exactly true to scale. It’s skewed in the gentleman’s favour.” The defining rule for every collection is that nothing should be boring. “We want to do something spectacular, so it’s that one piece you reach for in the closet on the day you need to feel fantastic,” Gray says.