Iggy Pop’s Wild Thing jacket: Not from Paradise Garage
//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).
//Back cover, Raw Power, Iggy & The Stooges, CBS Records, 1973//
Subsequently, when the Doves expressed a desire to reproduce the jacket in a new limited edition, I introduced them to Derek Harris of Lewis Leathers, who looks to have achieved another of his customary excellent production jobs with the reissue.
//Paradise Garage 1971. Design including signage by Electric Colour Company. Photo: David Parkinson//
It’s a shame it is marred by an error in an attempt to link it to the most important address in rock and pop fashion: the inclusion of the logo for Paradise Garage, the boutique operated by Trevor Myles at 430 King’s Road where it is claimed Pop bought the jacket.
When I interviewed Myles for the second edition of The Look in 2005 I didn’t have the research or interview material I subsequently gathered which shows that Paradise Garage opened in May 1971 and by October that year was foundering. As documented by me and others, the store was taken over the following month (November) and converted into Let It Rock by Patrick Casey, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood.
//Let It Rock clothing included in Nova February 1972 fashion spread. Also featured: designs by John and Molly Dove for traditional knitwear company Corgi. Source: vintage-a-peel.co.uk//
At this time Iggy Pop was dividing his time between his Michigan hometown Ann Arbor and New York; he didn’t arrive in London until four months later, in March 1972 with Stooges guitarist James Williamson at David Bowie’s management company Mainman’s expense, so never visited Paradise Garage.
A few months later in June 1972 they and the other Stooges Ron and Scott Asheton moved into a mews house rented out by (of all people) novelist Frederic Raphael in Seymour Walk, W8. Pop confirmed to Jon Savage last year that this was when he acquired the Wild Thing jacket from a stall in nearby Kensington Market .
That month Mick Rock photographed Pop in his new jacket during rehearsals for The Stooges’ concert at the Kings Cross Cinema; these are the images which appeared on the Raw Power sleeve.
Since the jacket was acquired from a different place more than six months after Paradise Garage closed, there is no justification for the presence of the shop’s distinctive logo on this new limited edition.