Paul Gorman is…

The Emperor Of Wyoming, 404 King’s Road

Apr 20th, 2012

//Stetson, embroidered shirt and hand-tooled leather belt from The Emperor Of Wyoming. Photo: David Parkinson for Club International, February 1974.//

Billy Murphy’s boutique The Emperor Of Wyoming was an extremely important staging post not just in the story of British rock and roll fashion but also the development of the vintage scene in this country.

Opened by Murphy at 404 King’s Road in 1972, TEOW specialised in selected items of Westernwear and American clothing at a time when the pickings were slim for such garments in London.

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Photography: Willie Christie on the (No Pussyfooting) cover

Feb 22nd, 2012
No Pussyfooting front

//Front cover (No Pussyfooting), Fripp & Eno, EG/Island, 1973.//

The final piece in Tate Modern’s current Yayoi Kusama show – her dramatic Infinity Mirror Room – brought to my vinyl-fixated mind one of the greatest record sleeves of all time: the gatefold for (No Pussyfooting), the album released in 1973 by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.

All of a piece with the music it packages – prismatic, playful, calm, cerebral, oblique – the four-part composition was photographed and designed at Eno’s behest by photographer/filmmaker Willie Christie.

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Portrait for new Burro book

Jan 14th, 2012

Portrait for Burro book. Photo: Ivan Jones.

Photographer Ivan Jones dropped by this week to take my portrait for a forthcoming book about the design business Burro. Contributors have been asked to wear garments they bought from the company for Ivan’s portraits.

I was a regular customer of the Burro outlet in Covent Garden’s Floral Street (and wrote about the label here).

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Photoshoot for the Tommy Roberts book: Mr Freedom winged boots, City Lights Studio suit, Practical Styling carrier bag, Jane Wealleans’ fabric print and much much more

Nov 19th, 2011
Tommy Roberts book photoshoot: Jane Wealleans print fabric

//Swathe with repeat print of American footballers, Jane Wealleans for Mr Freedom, 1970.//

Tommy Roberts book photoshoot: Jane Wealleans American footballer print on swathe of brown crepe.

//Jane Wealleans print on brown crepe.//

Here’s a sneak iPhone peak from yesterday’s photoshoot for my forthcoming book about Tommy Roberts.

Tommy’s son and accomplished photographer/cameraman Keith set up a studio in a room at his furniture emporium Two Columbia Road and shot around 50-plus garments and artefacts to go with the 300-odd images already planned for the book.

I snapped these on my phone in downtime; forgive the quality – hopefully they convey the flavour of the exercise.

Keith photographed a cornucopia of goodies, including two pairs of Mr Freedom’s famous winged boots, a carrier bag for Tommy’s 80s shop Practical Styling, a suit from his 70s boutique City Lights Studio (lent to us by another design hero Lloyd Johnson) and much more besides.

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Photography: Jordan by Peccinotti

May 3rd, 2011

These photographs of SEX shop superstar Jordan appear in the photographer Harri Peccinotti’s illustrated career resume HP.

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The Bill Burroughs scarf

Apr 1st, 2011

Over on GQ Eye, Glenn O’Brien writes about this Bill Burroughs scarf produced by Kate Simon from a sequence of her photographs of the master.

Read O’Brien’s post here.

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Dennis & Iggy get their tits out

Mar 30th, 2011

In these 70s shots Dennis Hopper and Iggy Pop are both wearing the so-called “tits tee” – the design which started out as an art-school project in the late 60s, became a novelty item, then a punk classic and more recently was a Haiti disaster fundraiser.

I investigated the story of the tits tee here.

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From The Vaults: Patti Smith, Andy Warhol’s Interview, October 1973

Mar 25th, 2011

As a companion to today’s post on the Horses cover, here’s another Patti Smith item from the archive: a feature by Penny Green from the October 1973 issue of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine.

Coinciding with the publication of Smith’s poetry book Witt, the photographs for the Interview piece were taken by Barbara Walz (who later produced The Fashion Makers with Bernadine Morris).

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Horses: “I never see me. I see us.”

Mar 24th, 2011

This is my copy of Horses, battered but unbowed after 35 years.

The story behind the photo-shoot for the front cover lies at the heart of Just Kids, Patti Smith’s valediction for Robert Mapplethorpe.

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Catalogues: Son Of Vulgar

Mar 23rd, 2011

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This sleeve for Joseph Beuys’ 1982 single is featured in Son Of Vulgar, the latest “scratch” catalogue from Maggs Bros’ counterculture department.

With 24 lots, it’s a typically eclectic affair.

Here is a selection, from a Malcolm McLaren promotional brochure for Bow Wow Wow and a Roxy Club membership card through US transgender photography of the early 20th Century to the LAPD’s report on the Symbionese Liberation Front and a book by Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo:

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