Punk Fashion at the NFT on Aug 6: Sidestepping cliches with Amber Butchart + Jordan Mooney
//Jordan Mooney, Gallery International, Vol 1, no 4, 1976//
On August 6 I am taking part in a discussion about Punk visual style and culture with fashion historian Amber Butchart and Jordan Mooney, the sales assistant superstar at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shops at 430 King’s Road in the 70s who became a fashion inspiration and role model in her own right.
//Jordan Mooney in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, 1978. Photo: BFI//
//Amber Butchart being filmed by Frederique Cifuentes for my 2012 series of King’s Road films//
//John Lydon 1976 in The Filth & The Fury. Photo: BFI//
Our chat takes place as part of DJ/filmmaker Don Letts’ forthcoming Punk On Film season organised by the BFI at London’s National Film Theatre, and will be held after a screening of Julien Temple’s 2000 Sex Pistols documentary The Filth & The Fury in NFT3.
//In another still from Jubilee on the cover of John A. Walker’s Left Shift, IB Tauris & Co, 2002//
Mooney started working at 430 King’s Road in 1975 when it was in its manifestation as SEX. Her extraordinary, shifting visual presentation indelibly associated her with the development of Punk; she became one of the public faces of the movement when the boutique was Seditionaries between 1976 and 1980.
//Mooney appeared with McLaren and Helen Wellington-Lloyd in John Sutcliffe’s Dressing For Pleasure, 1976. Here her voice can be heard over the intro credits//
//And she sometimes joined the Sex Pistols on stage, as in this summer 1976 performance for UK regional TV magazine show So It Goes//
Mooney continued to work with McLaren & Westwood during the transition into Worlds End and also pursued a career in performance, notably in the late Derek Jarman’s film Jubilee and with Adam & The Ants. She also managed Adam & The Ants for a spell, and subsequently her then-husband Kevin Mooney’s group Wide Boy Awake.
Dedicating her life to animal care, Mooney remains a pithy and insightful commentator on the Punk phenomenon.
I’m supplying a set of images – some rare and previously not shown publicly – and since we’re all aware that P*nk fatigue is setting in, we will do our level best to sidestep the cliches and dig deep for fresh anecdotes and thoughts. That’s a promise!
Look forward to seeing you there: tickets are available here.