“THE VELVET ROSE” BY SUSAN HOLMES MCKAGAN LAUNCHES @ BOOKMARC
- Gawain Semlear
- 21 minutes ago
- 3 min read
VALŪS Went Behind the Scenes for Susan Holmes McKagan’s Rock-Romance Novel Launch at Bookmarc in NYC
Written by GAWAIN SEMLEAR
Journalist, international supermodel, business woman, and newly minted authoress, Susan Holmes McKagan has lived a life that is anything but prosaic. Married to Rock N’ Roll legend Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses, Susan is equal parts glamoratti and punk, teaching one to abide by nobody’s rules.
Now, Susan’s debut novel “The Velvet Rose” grapples with the piercing vicissitudes that any trailblazer has felt. Protagonist Scarlett leaves her hometown and drops out of school to pursue a dream that is as vague as it is grand: becoming an artist. Amidst the euphoric and heady menagerie of Downtown Manhattan in the 1990s, she meets up-and-coming rockstar Johnny of “The Westies.” An intoxicating mixture of cigarettes, pomade, leather, and vetiver, this heartthrob sweeps young Scarlett off her feet and ensconces them in a romance tarrying the boundary between passion and toxicity.
With the release of the novel’s paperback version on August 11, the literary socialite and her famed beau held a signing at Bookmarc, an affiliate book store of Marc Jacobs, in New York’s West Village. Just like so many of the resplendent scenes in the book, the event was an effusion of champagne and personalities. With Duff flaunting a debonair wide-lapel pinstripe suit and Susan sporting a sparkly peach-colored dress, the couple looked as if they had just fallen out of Rock N’ Roll’s very own Garden of Eden (a nod and a wink to the Guns N’ Roses song of the same name).
“What brings you here tonight?” VALŪS asked more than a dozen partygoers. The answers were mixed, but there was one overarching theme: the unadulterated glamor of it all. From the din of fabulously dressed people to the pyramid of glass flutes, the whole room functioned as a pièce de résistance—a triumph crowned, of course, by the author’s infectious jouissance.
The following night, Guns N’ Roses played their hearts out at MetLife Stadium for the New York and New Jersey stop on their world tour. Susan, always the life of the party, swayed rhythmically in her VIP box, enraptured in the lyrics and instrumentals as if she were hearing their transcendental and cathartically incendiary messages for the first time.
Being as immersed in Rock N’ Roll as she is, the genre has suffused her own creative practice. The subject matter and writing style in “The Velvet Rose” have the productive errancy of a guitar solo. Sentence by sentence, there’s a kind of erratic riffing that all flows together by the end of the paragraph. Sprawling, vulnerable, rebellious, messy, and beautiful, she writes in a verse that comes straight from the soul. Backstage at Guns N’ Roses, she explains this influence to VALŪS: “Rock N’ Roll is my core, it's my energy, it's my heartbeat. I wanted to keep the legacy of that raw energy and unification.”
Capturing the aura of this revolutionary and iconoclastic art form, the book is a manifesto for living life on the fringe. Straying from conventionality, the characters embark on the mercurial though covetable journey of finding themselves through their art. The effect of which is a beauty that penetrates deep beneath the surface and paints a daunting portrait of life’s most fickle subject: the human experience.
Guests included designer Anna Sui, nightlife legend Diane Brill, PR maven Kelly Cutrone, designer Christian Ciriano, FGI President Maryanne Grisz, and more.
Photos courtesy of Marc Jacobs and Mark Minton
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