// In George Cox creepers: Malcolm McLaren, 430 King’s Road, January 1972. Photo: David Parkinson / Slowthai, Northampton, 2018. Photo: Ewen Spencer for Arena Homme + //

“Those blue suede shoes had a magical association that seemed authentic. They represented an age of desperate romantic revolt to change your life.”

Malcolm McLaren, notes on his life in fashion, 1997

I’m celebrating the 70th anniversary of the introduction of George Cox & Co’s first creeper at the Port Eliot Festival next week with Adam Waterfield, the fourth generation owner of the great independent British brand, and his son Alistair, a Central Saint Martins student and model who is very much involved in the family business.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Adam Waterfield, Alistair Waterfield, Andrew Greaves, Arena Homme +, Central Saint Martins, Comme des Garçons, David Parkinson, Ellie Grace Cumming, Ewen Spencer, Fred Perry, George Cox, Glastonbury Festival, Harold The Ted, Jonathan Baron, Le Kilt, Lewis Leathers, Northampton, Olly Alexander, Port Eliot Festival, Sam Rock, Slowthai, Years And Years

//My essay on Malcolm For Mayor with stickers by Scott King and Matthew Worley//

“The sticker may be the most efficient art form ever invented”

Jeffrey Deitch, 2019

I have an essay in DB Burkeman’s just-published follow-up to his 2010 survey of the use of audacious and eye-catching stickers in art, design, fashion, music and social activism.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Anthony Lister, DB Burkeman, Fiorucci, Hysteric Glamour, Invader, Jeffrey Deitch, Jenny Holzer, Marilyn Minter, Mark Mothersbaugh, Matthew Worley, Maurizio Cattelan, Rizzoli, Scott King, Shepard Farey, Stickers Vol 2: More Stuck-Up Crap, Stretch Armstrong

//Window display for Impresario at the New Museum, Sept 16 – Nov 20, 1988. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

//Introduction to the show. Image from the New Museum Digital Archive//

My biography of the late Malcolm McLaren will now be published in April 2020, exactly 10 years after his premature death at the age of 64.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Adam Ant, Art & Text, Catherine McGann, Impresario: Malcolm McLaren & The British New Wave, Keith Haring, Marcia Tucker, New Museum Of Contemporary Art, Paul Taylor, Vivienne Westwood, William Olander, Witches

“It’s like reconstructing the debris of old pop paraphernalia… what’s exciting about it is that you no longer need to buy guitars. You can choose a friend up the road, put your decks together with a beatbox and make your own records, demoralising [sic] the pop myth and beginning to find a way of using material yourself .”

On November 19 1982, the UK’s national weekly youth music programme The Tube included a segment marking the occasion when the terms (and concepts of) “scratching”, “break-dancing” and “hip-hop” were introduced to a mass British audience for the first time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Adam & The Ants, Afrika Bambaataa, Bond's, Funkapolitan, Gaz's Rocking Blues, Grandmaster Flash, Jools Holland, Meard Street, Melle Mel, Michael Holman, Nick Jones, Sugarhill Gang, The Clash, The Gargoyle, The Tube, Tom Dixon, Wham, Zulu Nation

//Malcolm McLaren with New York scenester Eileen Polk at New York nightclub Hurrah, October 1978. Photo: © Joe Stevens. No reproduction without permission//

Today marks eight years since the death of visual artist, designer and cultural provocateur Malcolm McLaren.

His friend Joe Stevens sent me this photo a couple of years back. It was taken during the period when McLaren – wearing one of the tartan bondage suits he designed with Vivienne Westwood – was mounting the defence of Sid Vicious, then on the murder charge for having killed Nancy Spungen.

This extraordinary episode from an extraordinary life – during which time McLaren encountered the likes of Donald Trump’s vile mentor Roy Cohn, the legendary radical lawyer William Kunstler and criminal defence attorney F. Lee Bailey (the latter by way of an introduction by Allen Ginsberg) – will of course be covered in my book Malcolm McLaren: The Biography, which is to be published by Constable & Robinson next year.

Tags: Allen Ginsberg, Constable & Robinson, Donald Trump, F. Lee Bailey, Hurrah, Roy Cohn, Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Vivienne Westwood, William Kunstler

//From The Times, September 24, 1974. Courtesy Matthew Worley//

//Mrs Scully features on the “right” side of the shirt after a reference to George Dangerfield’s book The Strange Death Of Liberal England//

//A 1970s issue of Mistress magazine//

I’m grateful to British academic Matthew Worley for having enlightened me as to the identity of “Mrs Scully”, whose name was among those printed on the You’re Gonna Wake Up us-and-them t-shirt first sold in Sex at 430 King’s Road in the autumn of 1974.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: bernie Rhodes, George Dangerfield, Gerry Goldstein, Joan Scully, Joe Orton, Matthew Worley, Search magazine, The Clash, The Strange Death Of Liberal England, The Times, You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You've Been Lying On!

//Jim French. Photo: SHOWStudio//

The American illustrator and photographer Jim French – best known for his pioneering endeavours in the field of homoerotic art – has died at home in Palm Springs at the age of 84.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Andy Warhol, Bruce Weber, Colt Studios, Cowboys t-shirt, Hand In Glove, Herb Ritts, Jim French, Longhorns - Dance, Luger, Manpower, Margaret Walters, Morrissey, Philadelphia Museum School, Rip Colt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sex Pistols, Tammis Keefe, The Male Nude, The Smiths, Tom Of Finland, Vivienne Westwood

//From left: Kent, James and Nylon. Please advise if you are the photographer or know their identity. No reproduction without permission//

Artist/thinker Judy Nylon has sent me this great shot taken at London punk haven The Roxy in the spring of 1977.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Boys Express, Erica Echenberg, Granny Takes A trip, Joe Stevens, Judy Nylon, Kate Simon, New Musical Express, Nick Kent, NME, Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Roxy

//Jewellery by Gayle Saunders and Stanley Rosenberg. Photography/art direction: Hipgnosis. From Phallic Metallics, Club, May 1976//

I’m grateful to Stian Brekke for sending me a link to his site hipgnosiscovers.com for these arresting pages from a 1976 issue of US men’s magazine Club, launched as the sister publication the British Club International the previous year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Aaron Faber, Antiquarius, Booty Jewellery, Clarissa Cooke, Club, Club International, Gayle Saunders, H & D Fine, Hipgnosis, Mike Jackson, Richard Anderson, Stanley Rosenberg, Steve Ridgeway

//London Records promotional image, 1958//

In 1956 the Hollywood photographer John E. Reed took a series of promotional shots of the stars of DJ Alan Freed’s rocksploitation flick Don’t Knock The Rock.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alan Freed, Chuck Berry, Don't Knock The ROck, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, God Save The Queen, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jet Harris, JOhn E. Reed, Little Richard, London records, Patrick Casey, Sam Cooke, Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, Yvonne Gold