‘Absolutely London’: Marx, Kenny MacDonald + PiL style
//Marx, the Great Gear Market, 85, King’s Road, Chelsea, 1979. Photo: Salvador Macasil//
In the histories of London street style, Kenny MacDonald’s King’s Road outlet Marx receives rare mention, yet from the mid-70s this unusual and tucked-away boutique was important in the development of the type of English tailoring-with-a-twist which has subsequently dominated a strand of menswear around the world.
This is why these images, which have recently been unearthed by expert clothes-hound Salvador Macasil after 35-plus years, make for interesting viewing.
At that distance the designs and displays may seem tame, but as a keen Marx customer (I blew my first decent wage packet in January 1979 on a two-piece Prince Of Wales check Marx suit with matching yellow shirt and “club” tie from MacDonald to go with a newly-acquired pair of plain-cap brown Trickers) I can assure you that MacDonald’s offer was radical in the context of what was being peddled by most other clothing stores at the time.
//Interior display, Marx, 1979. Photo: Salvador Macasil//
I made sure there was at least one reference to Marx in The Look and companion map The Look Of London. I have also written about the outlet in more depth in interviews with John Wardle aka Jah Wobble, bass-player in Public Image Ltd, whose members were friendly with MacDonald and wore his designs.
//Another view of the interior display and counter. Photo Salvador Macasil//
//Japanese repro label Peel + Lift has recently reissued one of Marx’s regimental ties, as worn by John Lydon in the late 70s//
MacDonald had been in situ for a few years; there are images of Marx clothes in fashion shoots when the Great Gear Market was The Common Market in 1975.
//Male model’s raincoat from Marx, The Common Market, in this 1975 fashion shoot by David Parkinson. The female model is wearing the raincoat dress designed by Malcolm McLaren for Sex, the store he operated with Vivienne Westwood a few hundred yards from Marx at 430 King’s Road at the time//
MacDonald was introduced to the PiL circle by sometime member Jeanette Lee, who had managed another King’s Road boutique, Acme Attractions.
“Kenny was very quietly spoken and thoughtful, a real London bloke,” says Wobble. “You would not get someone like him anywhere else in the world at that time. He was absolutely London.” MacDonald was such a fan of classic movies that he arranged private screenings of noir films at Kings Cross cinema The Scala.
“It was interesting because he was a black bloke into the public school look, making fake Jockey Club ties and talking in an upper-class accent,” says Wobble. “That was strange and somehow great. And he’d always do the unexpected. When everyone else was producing pegged trousers, he did a straight-legged, conservative cut. When everyone was wearing low, long thin lapels down to one button, quite 50s, he made a higher cut jacket, slightly uptight, very English.”
//Marx sales assistant sporting MacDonald designs inside the shop, 1979. Photo: Salvador Macasil//
Macasil and his partner Sue have recently rediscovered these photos after a house move. He reckons they were taken in the summer of 1979, since he was given an SLR camera as a birthday present around that time.
This chimes with the clothes worn by PiL members during promotion of the single Death Disco, which was released in June that year. In his recently published bio John Lydon points out that MacDonald also designed the shadow-plaid suit and sheepskin he wore to the High Court in his legal battle with Malcolm McLaren in 1979. I have previously misidentified the suit as coming from another King’s Road boutique, Johnson’s, so am happy make the correction here. Lydon also wore it onstage for PiL’s performance at the Leeds Futurama Festival in September 1979.
And of course MacDonald also produced the giant teddy-bear fur coats worn by Wobble and Lydon; the latter is wearing his red version in this Old Grey Whistle Test performance of Poptones:
Macasil also took the opportunity to photograph a few other King’s Road stores on the same day he captured Marx; like many others I was a customer of these.
1t 191 King’s Road, Pinto supplied me with another splendid suit around this time (a woollen blue/black thin stripe one-button affair shot through with silver thread).
//Flip, 191 King’s Road, west London, summer 1979. The bloke on the right is wearing one of my school blazers. Photo: Salvador Macasil//
//Boy, 153 King’s Road, west London, summer 1979. Photo: Salvador Macasil//
//Pinto, 125 King’s Road, west London, summer 1979. Photo: Salvador Macasil//
It is a matter of record that MacDonald’s life took a turn for the worse in the 1980s and 1990s. I’ll leave it to others to comment on that. It is a fact that MacDonald made a valuable contribution to the way we wore and the way we wear today.
Read The Look interview with Jah Wobble here.