The legendary Harold The Ted + one of Mr Freedom’s ‘monstrous oddities’
//Harold Harris with 10ft tall display item designed by Rod Stokes, Mr Freedom, 1971. Photo courtesy Andrew Greaves.//
Something of a legend in 70s British boutique circles, here is Harold The Ted in all his glory accompanying one of the extravagant display items at Mr Freedom in Kensington Church Street: a 10 foot tall cut-out representation of a glowering boy scout made by Electric Colour Company’s Rod Stokes.
Harold Harris hailed from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. Avoiding the articulation of the first letters of his name, hometown and county – as detailed in my book Mr Freedom – ‘Arold became the boutique’s star salesman when the late Tommy Roberts, Trevor Myles and John Paul moved their fashion business from 430 King’s Road to Kensington in December 1970.
“Harold was a total Ted, beyond total, fucking mental,” Roberts told me in 2000. “He was good image. He didn’t care who our customers were. There’d be Jill St John or some other film star looking through the clothes and he’d go: ‘Wot you fuckin’ doing with that rack, cock?’ He’d say to David Hockney, ‘So you want a pair of triousis do yer cocker?’ He gave the shop a wonderful feel.”
Gene Krell, then co-owner of King’s Road shop Granny Takes A Trip, says: “Harold was a working class kid straight out of the 50s in Teddy boy suit and crepe-sole shoes. Malcolm McLaren wore the same style shoes.”
McLaren acquired his creepers – in blue – from Mr Freedom, and once told me:”They were probably the most important things I ever bought. To wear a pair of blue suede shoes at that time made a statement about what everyone else was wearing and thinking.”
//Malcolm McLaren, King’s Road, World’s End, Chelsea, January 1972. Photo: Mirrorpix//
At the end of 1971 McLaren opened his experiment in retro culture Let It Rock in Mr Freedom’s former King’s Road premises, where photographs show he pared 50s style away from contemporary influences (Harris’s appearance was soon bowdlerised by the cheesy likes of Mud and Showaddywaddy) and produced a faithful, finer detailed and ultimately tougher and more threatening look in line with his subversive intent.
Nevertheless, the late London fashion player Johnny Moke believed Harris may have been one of the sparks of inspiration for McLaren’s initial forays into fashion.”We all used to go out in the evening,” Moke told me in 1999. “Harold would be there, dressed up and talking about being a Teddy Boy. He was a bit of a handful but we all liked him and Malcolm was always paying attention.”
And what of the display item towering over Harris? Noted as one of Mr Freedom’s “monstrous oddities” in a Daily Telegraph review, it was but one of a series of outrageous commissions from Roberts not just to Stokes and his ECC colleagues but also to designers Jon Wealleans, Stan Hesketh, Sue and Simon Haynes and the Mediocre Murals team of Geoff Edwards and Les Coleman (who sadly died earlier this month).
For the full story read Mr Freedom – Tommy Roberts: British Design Hero.
Visit the Electric Colour Company site here.
Read a farewell to Les Coleman here.