//’Mick Passes Shirley, 1955′  Illustration for a feature about growing up in the 50s by Mick Farren, Club International 1975 by Hollyhead/NTA from an idea of George Hardie’s//

Growing up in London in the 60s and 70s with an interest in the counterculture, music and street politics meant that the shaggy-headed figure of Mick Farren loomed large on the landscape.
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Tags: 1975, Club International, Edward Barker, Filthy McNasty's, George Hardie, ICA, Joy hebditch, Kenneth Anger, Larry Wallis, Mick Farren, Nasty Tales, Nick Logan, NME, Paul Lewis, Phun City, Richard Thomas, The Deviants, Watch Out Kids, West Hollywood

//7in sq paper sleeve, front: Screwed Up, Mick Farren, Stiff Records, 1977//

//7in sq paper sleeve, back: Screwed Up, Mick Farren, Stiff Records, 1977//

This is the sleeve designed by Barney Bubbles – would have been 71 today – for Screwed Up, the 1977 EP by the rabble-rousing writer and performer Mick Farren, who died at the weekend after collapsing onstage during a performance with his band The Deviants of their poem/song Cocaine & Gunpowder.

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Tags: 1977, Mick Farren, Screwed Up, Stiff Records

See also here.

Tags: 2015, Jamie Camplin, Thames & Hudson, The Bookseller

//From The Look blog 2009//

A few years back I wrote a series of blogs about the so-called “Wild Thing” jacket worn by Iggy Pop on the cover of his and The Stooges’ album Raw Power; in 2008 I had brokered a deal for the jacket designers John and Molly Dove to reissue a t-shirt range – including a version bearing the Wild Thing’s panther head – via Topman.

Around that time I also hooked them up with the current owner of the jacket, US maverick pop culture entrepreneur and collector  “Long Gone” John Mermis (who I’d met as far back as the mid-90s at his extraordinary Long Beach mansion).

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Tags: Derek Harris, Frederic Raphael, Iggy & The Stooges, Iggy Pop, JOhn Dove, Jon Savage, Kensington Market, Kings Cross Cinema, Let It Rock, Lewis Leathers, Long Gone John, Mick Rock, Nova, Paradise Garage, Patrick Casey, Vivienne Westwood, Wild Thing

The Emporium, the London clothing outlet which inaugurated London’s vintage fashion business, is to close after 27 years.

As London’s independent retail fashion scene took the swan-dive from which it never recovered in the mid-80s, so Jon Hale and Jacki Cook’s shop in Greenwich, south-east London, provided a haven of 20th Century style, handpicked with consummate taste from their carefully accumulated archive of thousands of garments from the 30s to the 70s.

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Tags: Chris Brick, Chris Sullivan, Dagenham Girls, Greenwich, Jacki Cook, Jean Paul Gaultier, Jon Hale, Mission Impossible, Munich, Paul Weller, Phil Dirtbox, The Emporium

//Laurie Cunningham in bespoke suit and tie of his own design aged 17, 1973. Photo courtesy Dermot Kavanagh//

Journalist Dermot Kavanagh’s project to celebrate the life and achievements of the late soul boy footballer Laurie Cunningham moves apace; if you have the opportunity, listen to Kavanagh talking to BBC London 94.9’s Robert Elms today.
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Tags: Dermot Kavanagh, Elthorne Estate, Laurie Cunningham, Real Madrid, Robert Elms, Sunday Times Magazine, Tony Nwachukwu, Yemisi Blake

Here’s a selection of photographs from the family photo album of Johnny Deluxe, one of my favourite unpindownable Londoners. Deluxe is an artist, clothes-maker, performer, raconteur and all-round individualist.

I’ll let him tell the story behind each.

This was taken in March or April 1978. I was wearing a Seditionaries Destroy t-shirt and Boy zip trousers, not quite bondage ones, just zips on the pockets, but super drainpipe in bright canvas. I was just about to go to France and be chased by French teddy boys. I got my hair cut at Alphonso’s in Oxford Road, Reading, an old boy’s barber where I asked for an “Elvis” and then hacked into it at home (Alphonso was too old for the modern stuff).

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Tags: Alice Clowes, Boy, Cowboys, Destroy, Johnny Deluxe, Jordan, Reading, Seditionaries, Vivienne Westwood

I am now starting work on a new book.

Legacy: The Story Of The Face is to be published by Thames & Hudson in 2015 and has the support and involvement of Nick Logan, the owner and founder of what became one of the most important and influential publications of recent times.

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Tags: Bauer, Emap, New York, Nick Logan, Playbopy, Rolling Stone, Saturday Review, Sunday Times Colour Supplement, Thames & Hudson, Twen

//Trevor Myles, Mustang and 430 King's Road, late summer 1971. Photo: Michael Roberts//

//From Michael Roberts' article Men & Their Machines, Club, October 1971//

Trevor Myles’ decision to incorporate a flocked and tiger-striped 1966 Ford Mustang as part of his retail space Paradise Garage naturally attracted a lot of attention during the brief existence of this unusual fashion outlet at 430 King’s Road in Chelsea’s World’s End in 1971.

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Tags: Andrew Greaves, City Lights Studio, Club, David Smith, Design, Electric Colour Company, Hot Car, Jeffrey Pine, Paradise Garage, Rod Stokes, Trevor myles

Ssion were great at Birthdays last night: exciting and euphoric. Been smiling ever since.

Visit the Ssion site.

Tags: Birthdays, Cody Critcheloe, Ssion