I’m currently featured with four stylish blokes who are also in their 60s talking about clothing choices on menswear hub Mr Porter.

//Lagos striped shirt Post-Imperial; trousers Acne Studios; shoes Bass Weejuns. Photography Tami Aftab; styling Catherine Hayward//

//Souvenir jacket Kapital; Chinos Alex Hill; monkey boots Denson; bag Mr Freedom 1970. Photography: Tami Aftab; styling Catherine Hayward//

The article is headed Experience Required: Style Lessons From Men In Their Sixties and for the accompanying shoot I wore pieces by brands Acne, Alex Hill, GH Bass, Denson, Kapital and Post-Imperial.

The other participants are fashion entrepreneur Charles Aboah, model and vintage upcycler Herbie Mensah, designer/director Patrick Kinmonth and illustrator Stewart Walton.

Writer Fedora Abu put the feature together and the talented team includes photographer Tami Aftab and stylist Catherine Hayward.

Read the full story here.

Tags: Acne, Alex Hill, Catherine Hayward, Charles Aboah, Denson, Fedora Abu, GH Bass, Herbie Mensah, Kapital, Mr Porter, Patrick Kinmonth, Post-Imperial, Stewart Walton, Tami Aftab

//Interior of the first Fiorucci boutique, Galleria Passerella, Milan, 1972//

I am extremely grateful to artist and designer Paul Walters for his gift of dozens of issues of Design magazine dating to the dawn of the 1970s.

These are being catalogued and added to the collection I already have of the title; some were donated by Paul’s fellow artist and designer Steve Thomas a few years ago.

Design was founded in the mid-60s by the Design Council precursor the Council of Industrial Design, and back issues are a goldmine of visuals and text about most aspects of the design world, from interiors, posters and packaging to product innovation, architecture and popular culture.

//The report on the store opening in Design, December 1972//

I’m going to post a selection of stories that have caught my eye over the coming months, starting with the image at the top of the post: a rarely seen view inside Elio Fiorucci’s first boutique, which he opened in Milan’s Galleria Passerella in late 1972.

Fiorucci was much inspired, to put it politely, by Trevor Myles and Tommy Roberts’ pop-art fashion outlet Mr Freedom – which had gone out of business in the spring of 1972 – and commissioned artist Stan Peskett, who had produced murals for Roberts, to create a space which engaged customers with a similar energy: the yellow and red colour scheme was extended to the exposed piping and venting with insignia of sunrays emanating from fluffy clouds hovering over the clothing racks.  Stan, who I interviewed  a couple of years ago for my Malcolm McLaren biography, has described his interior for Fiorucci as ‘an installation’.

//Advert in Design, December 1972//

//Spread from fashion shoot featuring Mr Freedom designs, Nova October 1971//

Coincidentally, an ad in the same issue of Design featured an image of a model in Mr Freedom clothes which had appeared in Nova magazine the previous year.  The advert was for the architecture and interiors publication Abitare, which continues to this day – see here.

Tags: Council of Industrial Design, D, Design Council, Elio Fiorucci, Fiorucci, Milan, Paul Walters, Stan Peskett, STeve Thomas

I’m really jazzed about getting my hands on the first finished copy of Totally Wired, my history of the music press which is published by Thames & Hudson this autumn.

Designer Daniel Streat has done wonders with the day-the-world-turned-dayglo jacket concept and my choice of cover star Poly Styrene.

There are 60 or so illustrations, all magazines from my archive. The diversity reflects the content of the book, which covers the usual suspects – NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone – but will hopefully turn readers onto the unexpected and surprising, from Black Music and Collusion to WET, Ben Is Dead and Girlfrenzy.

Totally Wired is published in the UK and elsewhere on September 22 and in North America on November 29. It is available to order now from all good booksellers as well as my Bookshop page at uk.bookshop.org/shop/paulgorman or by clicking on this panel:

Tags: Ben Is Dead, Black Music, Collusion, Daniel Streat, Girlfrenzy, Melody Maker, NME, Rolling Stone, Thames & Hudson, WET

What with Pistol and all, it seems timely to discuss Malcolm McLaren’s place in the scheme of things so tonight journalist Helen Barrett and I will be in conversation at a London Society event about the late cultural iconoclast’s relationship with the city of his birth. Here is a selection of visuals from this evening’s presentation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Abraham Corre, Andrew Edmunds, bar mitzvah, Channel 4, Cumberland Hotel, Fora, Helen Barrett, Mayor Of London, Rozetta Corre, Selfridges, Sex Pistols, Solomon Corre, The Ghosts of Oxford Street

++ McLaren outside the empty Centre Point, spring 1979. Photo: Barry Plummer ++

Rare and exclusive images will be on display during the forthcoming event about the late Malcolm McLaren’s London life at Fora Soho on June 9.

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Tags: A&M Records, Buckingham Palace, Carysfort Road, Centre Point, Cheyne Walk, Denmark Street, Eve Edwards, Fora, Goldsmiths College of Art, Grosvenor Square, Herb Lester, London Society, Mayor Of London, Nostalgia Of Mud, Sex Pistols, Situation Vacant, Tin Pan Alley Club

In the evening June 9 I’ll be in Soho for a London Society event about the London life of the late cultural provocateur Malcolm McLaren.

At workplace venue Fora in Broadwick Street writer Helen Barrett and I will be discussing the ways in which the man born in Stoke Newington and buried in Highgate Cemetery used the city as the springboard for his dizzying range of creative and subversive activities.

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Tags: BRoadwick Street, Fora, Helen Barrett, Herb lester Associates, Highgate Cemetery, London Society

Signed copies from a selection of my work are now available from this site – click on the button in the right-hand column or select SHOP from the menu at the top of the page.

At the moment you can buy:

• Mr Freedom – Tommy Roberts: British Design Hero

• Reasons To Be Cheerful: The Life & Work Of Barney Bubbles

• In Their Own Write: Adventures In The Music Press (now out of print)

• The Look Of London (the new map collaboration with Herb Lester Associates)

From time to time I’ll also be making available signed copies of other out of print work, including my book with Goldie, Nine Lives (£9 inc P+P), and the increasingly rare second edition of The Look Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion (£45 inc P+P).

Inquire here about these titles and for purchases outside the UK.

TAGS: None

//Anita Pallenberg + film-maker Harmony Korine, 2008. Photo: Eva Vermandel.//

A couple of years back I interviewed Anita Pallenberg – who celebrated her birthday yesterday – for Mojo magazine.

The subject was the scene in and around the King’s Road in 1967. Crisp and funny, Pallenberg was just as buzzed about the present;  visiting Karl Lagerfeld in Paris the next day, her interests in gardening and photography, the bargains to be found in charity shops and the notion of a collection based on the MA show from her studies at Saint Martins in the 90s.

A few months later, with her friend Anna Sui, Pallenberg participated in a rock & roll event I organised at the Port Eliot LitFest; after the show it was an honour to give her a vintage Vive Le Rock tee, which, of course, she wore with her trademark élan.

Here’s a refreshed and re-edited chance to appreciate this bewitching figure whose combination of innate style, fashion-savviness and earthy sexuality brought Continental sophistication to Swinging London and turned it on its head:

Gawky gamins and dolly-birds melted into insignificance in the presence of the impressive 21-year-old who arrived in London in 1965 having already studied graphic design in her native Rome, assisted Vogue photographer Gianni Penati and modelled in Paris.

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Tags: Anita Pallenberg, Donald Cammell, Emmerton & Lambert, Eva Vermandel, Granny Takes A trip, Harmony Korine, James Fox, Keith Richards, King's Road, Ossie Clarke, Robert Fraser, Volker Schlöndorff

Maggs has issued a scratch catalogue of William Burroughs’ photographs of London 1972 – 1974.

These are hand-made prints produced a few years ago from the original negatives and are conservation-framed and glazed.

Here are some more pages from the catalogue:

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Tags: Carl Williams, Duke Street, Maggs Bros, William Burroughs

This framed Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster is available from Steven Sclaroff.

Read my report on how MAD magazine artist Wally Wood produced it in 1967 for Paul Krassner’s satirical publication The Realist – and how the element featuring Snow White and “the Sir Punks”  came to appear on a t-shirt sold at Seditionaries – here.

Tags: MAD magazine, Paul Krassner, Seditionaries, Snow White & The Sir Punks, The Realist, Wally Wood