It has been a bit of a ride for me lately, but I’m not one to stay down for long.  I was out and about all week, doing a little of this and a little of that, mostly centered on making money on my own.  And it turns out sometimes all we need is a little push.  Sure I feel like what with the total lack of anything prearranged, and not one but two earthquakes in two weeks, I’ve had a bit too much push, but a push I got.  I didn’t do too badly either!  And while I do the latest start-over, it’s tempting to really ask “what do I really want”, to wonder which world to go to.  Should I continue in the finance world that has supported me for so long, or is it possible to venture into the creative world just a little, or even … a lot?  Up to now, I have viewed them as separate: the finance world where I work, the creative world where I dream.  But, for me, have they actually ever been separate?

I remember when I bought my first Mercedes, a brand new, black, four-door sedan, conservative in every way, the car I wanted since age 14 when everyone else wanted a Camaro…conservative, except for one thing.  I blared out my music from that four-door Mercedes, making that car every bit the car of one’s youth.  Sometimes I wondered what my car thought of it all.  I wondered if that car wanted a young woman to treat her like a Camaro, to play this loud music, or did the car want a more conservative owner?  Sure you’ll tell me cars don’t have thoughts, don’t have feelings, but I’m certain they do.  I am certain that they do because I believe that car kept going long after another lesser-spirited car would have been sent away to the crush heap to become one of those metal cubes they pick up with tongs.  I’m certain that car decided to keep going all those many years because it got to, in fact had to, take care of me and mostly because, for all of those years, it got to play really cool music.  But clothes, what do they think?  Is it possible that a suit actually hopes he will be overlooked by the traditional finance-man, the kind of man for who the word “suit” becomes synonymous with the man himself, and instead hopes for a rock star to pick him up and take him home?  Does that suit long to be a rock ‘n’ roll version of my conservative, black, four-door Mercedes sedan?

I missed the press junket that was the January 2014 Milan Fashion Week because I was working too hard in the finance world.  But it was the finance world that took me to tony sections of Melrose Avenue last Friday, and never resisting looking in the windows of the trendy stores there that are the counterparts to the well-breeds of Rodeo Drive, many of which tout their rock-fashion influences, but remain out-of-reach and expensive, I looked in the window of the menswear designer John Varvatos, and what did I see?  Kiss!  Sure Kiss figures and promotional things are all the subject of the windows of the Hard Rock Café on Hollywood Blvd., but that is that world – the rock world; this … is my world, my day world, the world of finance, the world of … suits.  It’s easy to put a rock star in rock clothes.  I like rock clothes.  Those men look good in rock clothes.  But I have to admit, I have always wanted to see rock-men in the clothes of the world that supports me.  I mean if a man looks good, why not?  So why wouldn’t that rock-man look great in the suit of the finance-man?  And this window was just that!

I took my own pics of the windows of the John Varvatos store, on Sunday after last Friday afternoon when I first saw the windows, so the pics don’t quite capture the intensity that the windows had for me on Friday while sitting in traffic all mentally keyed to work in the finance world.  Nevertheless, below are the pics, the store front signage, the various members of Kiss done as mannequins, complete with make-up, and wearing Varvatos’ “suits” – suits that, I think, look as happy as a four-door Mercedes sedan blaring out rock music!  I even snapped a “customer” in the parking lot who has taken the look to heart, complete with the long hair and suit.  As for the news on this, turns out, had I read the news of the January Fashion Week, I would have seen that Varvatos made Kiss the “face” of his Spring 2014 collection; I would have seen the Kiss appearance on the Milan catwalk; I would have read how Gene Simmons thinks fashion is important; I would have seen the images.  But what made this particularly fun for me was that Kiss literally stomped right into my finance world.  My worlds… mixed!  It truly is a crazy ride right now.  I wonder what’s next?

Huffington Post article of January 12, 2014 covering Kiss’ appearance at Milan Fashion Week:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/12/kiss-jon-varvatos-milan-fashion-week_n_4584633.html#slide=2468444