Paul Gorman is…

Malcolm McLaren in Witches trenchcoat on the steps of the British Museum 1983

Jun 9th, 2015

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This portrait of Malcolm McLaren was captured among the columns outside the entrance to London’s august British Museum by Andy Rosen in 1983.

In the photograph taken during promotion of the Duck Rock album, which was released at the start of 1983, McLaren sported a rare trenchcoat design from the Witches collection he and Vivienne Westwood debuted on the catwalk that spring.

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The Old Man: Philip “Staff” Gorman (April 25, 1903 – June 8, 1980)

Jun 8th, 2015
AFG, PDG, Margaret Barrett (later Roditi), Billy Craigan, March 2 1940 copy

//My father in uniform on his wedding day, March 2, 1940, north London//

“Bad thing for a young man to lose his father” Charles Cheeryble, Nicholas Nickleby

My father died 35 years ago today.

I was 20 at the time, and witnessed him take his final breath. The narrow world of music and clothes I inhabited was preoccupied with Ian Curtis’s recent suicide; given the fact that my father had been diagnosed with cancer four years previously and spent the last 18 months on earth hospitalised and fighting like a bastard for his life, I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. PiL’s Death Disco was much more my speed.

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‘A booby trap in Pop Art’: The tits tee featured in 1972 Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue

Jun 2nd, 2015
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//Detail, Frederick’s catalogue. Photo: Johnny Deluxe//

Congratulations to our pal Johnny Deluxe for this fantastic spot; he happened upon this kitsch sketch of an original tits t-shirt while leafing through an early 70s Frederick’s Of Hollywood catalogue.

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//Catalogue page. Photo: Johnny Deluxe//

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A cause for celebration: Digitisation of all 239 issues of Spare Rib

Jun 2nd, 2015

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Great news that the British Library has digitised the archive of one of the most important magazines of modern times: Spare Rib.

If you don’t know it or haven’t seen the publication, you are in for a treat. As the British Library’s politics and public life curator Polly Russell says, Spare Rib was “funny, irreverent, intelligent and passionate… a product of its time which is also somehow timeless”.

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