//Interior, 430 King's Road, Chelsea, May 1971. Note coconut matting, shack-style dressing room doors, trompe de l'oeil gate painted on stockroom door... and fake tiger. Photography: David Parkinson.//

I first wrote about Electric Colour Company – the design studio formed in the East End by four fine art students in the late 60s – in The Look and then in more detail here.

//Amid the singlets, printed sweatshirts and appliqued denim, a bamboo cage housed birds of paradise, suspended from the matting covered ceiling.//

In my view, ECC deserves much greater recognition for executing some very clever work in the field of retail design and interiors in the period 1969-1973.

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Tags: Andrew Greaves, Blueberry Hill, City Lights Studio, Electric Colour Company, Let It Rock, Paradise Garage, Seditionaries, SEX, Time Out, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Trevor myles, Worlds End

//Detail, Ian Dury's Billy Bentley boxing gown, commissioned from Sex, 1974. Photographer: Adrian Turner.//

Ian Dury was as much a visual as verbal stylist.

The late performer’s wordsmithery comes into focus in daughter Jemima’s soon-to-be-released book ‘Hallo Sausages’, which also conveys his rich and idiosyncratic sartorial presence.

Published by Bloomsbury on October 28, ‘Hallo Sausages’ presents lyrics to 170 of Dury’s songs, some scribbled and heavily anotated, others meticulously typed and displayed to best effect in the book design by another member of Dury’s extended family, Jake Tilson (brother of Dury’s widow Sophy; their father is the eminent British artist Joe Tilson).

Making a merit of the archival jumble Dury left behind on his death in 2000 (a bunch of lyrics were found in a carrier bag bearing Barney Bubbles’ familiar Blockhead logo), this is a lovingly put-together document, the songs and Jemima Dury’s reminiscences adorned by a bank of rare, personal and professionally-taken images.

To celebrate the publication of ‘Hallo Sausages’, here’s a selection of key items from Jemima’s Dad’s wardrobe with some background material sourced from my recent book about one-time Kilburn & The High Roads manager Tommy Roberts. Jemima has also contributed a couple of images from her own archive.

Meanwhile, at the end of this post, there’s an opportunity to win a signed copy of ‘Hallo Sausages’.

//Onstage at London's Lyceum, 1981. Photographer: David Corio.//

Pearly King jacket

Rooted as he was in London lore, Dury added this authentic Pearly King jacket to his stage ensemble in the late 70s. According to Sophy Dury, he later found out it had belonged to an Eastender named John Snow (hence “JS Of Mile End” on the back). Snow’s mother had loaned the jacket to her friend Mrs. E. Rainbird, who wore it on VE Níght.
In a 1985 letter to the BBC radio broadcaster Libby Purves (who interviewed Dury that year) Mrs Rainbird wrote that she recognised the jacket from his TV appearances. Purves complied with her request to pass the letter outlining the provenance to Dury, who put it in one of the jacket pockets, where it remains.

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Tags: 'Hallo Sausages', Anton Corbjin, Bloomsbury, Chris Killip, Colin Thomas, David Corio, Humphrey Ocean, Ian Dury, Jake Tilson, Jemima Dury, Joe Tilson, Kilburn & The High Roads, Let It Rock, Malcolm McLaren, Martin Cole, Roberta Bayley, SEX, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Sophy Tilson, Vinyl Mogul, Will Birch

//Sex assistant Jordan, Gallery International, Vol 1, no 4.//

It’s unlikely that cities will shake or nations start to rock under the impact of Malcolm McLaren’s sexual revolution. A few people might die though.

Malcolm McLaren, at 30, is a mixture of entrepreneurial cultist, sexual evangelist, businessman, artist, fetishist and political philosopher; a psychotic visionary in the ephemeral subculture of the fashion world.

David May, Gallery International Vol 1 no 4.

In November 1975 – by which time his charges the Sex Pistols had just embarked on live performances – Malcolm McLaren was interviewed by journalist David May at 430 King’s Road, then in full bloom as radical retail venture SEX.

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Tags: Alan Jones, Bob Guccione, Cambridge Rapist, Chelsea Arts Club, David May, Forum, Gallery International, Hendon, Jeremy Thorpe, Jo Buckley, Jordan, Len Richmond, Let It Rock, Michael Collins, Michael Roberts, MIddlesex Polytechnic, Naked Cowboys, New English Library, Ravensbourne College, SEX, Sex Pistols, Simon Barker, The Economist, The Sunday Times, Time Out, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die

A viewing of Jes Benstock’s fab doc A British Guide To Showing Off occasions this opportunity to dig out the London Belles feature from a 1973 issue of shortlived free magazine West One.

Above is milliner Diane Logan in one of her outfits as contestant Rita Ritz in the 1973 Alternative Miss World.

Logan – wife of sculptor Peter, mother of fashion illustrator Blue and sister-in-law of AMW host & hostess Andrew – is wearing a satin bathing suit with one of her own hats (from Logan’s Chiltern Street shop) and sandals from Tommy Roberts’ Covent Garden boutique City Lights Studio.

Another London Belle was Vivienne Westwood in an early media appearance wearing a Let It Rock striped suit, ankle boots, patterned stockings and an adapted Chuck Berry t-shirt from 430 King’s Road’s incarnation as Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die.

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Tags: Alternative Miss World, Andrew Logan, Biba, Blue Logan, Chuck Berry, City Lights Studio, Diane Logan, Frederick Freed, Fulham Road, Jean Howell, Jes Benstock, Laurita, Let It Rock, Louise Doktor, Mary, Models 1, No One To Love Me, Peter Logan, Sha-Weez, Shelley Martin, Society for Cutting Up Men, Suzi Quatro, The British Guide To Showing Off, Tommy Roberts, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Valerie Solanas, Vivienne Westwood, West 1, Zandra Rhodes

Can’t beat a bit of Chuck for a frolic.

Watch him move.

I saw him live a year or so later at The Rainbow. He played a 35-minute set and brought on his daughter for the lovey-dovey finale. It may have been South Of The Border.

When the Teds realised he had vamoosed rather than play an encore they tore up the place.

Twenty-odd years later I was in the green room for an edition of The David Letterman Show which featured him and was shot in London. What struck me was Berry’s bearing and the agile grace with which he moved among the throng of well-wishers and fans.

That and the fact he was wearing the same pair of yellow Lionels I’d seen on him at the Rainbow…

Tags: Chuck Berry, Let It Rock, The David L:etterman Show, The Finsbury Park Rainbow

I am currently working with Tommy Roberts on a book about his life and career in fashion. Tommy has been assembling a selection of anecdotes and stories which will feature as occasional tasters here over the coming months.

This reminiscence stems from the period in the early 70s when Tommy operated City Lights Studio. Situated at 54 Shorts Gardens WC2 with a darkly glamorous interior design realised by Electric Colour Company’s Andrew Greaves + Jeffrey Pine, City Lights was the first fashion store in London’s Covent Garden, the neighbourhood then dominated by the capital’s fruit and veg market.

City Lights Studio, which came into being at the end of 1972, was a fashion emporium I created in tandem with Willy Daly, a colleague and friend since we had worked together at Mr Freedom.

City Lights was situated in an imposing high-ceilinged loft atop a building in Covent Garden. Our studio designed, wholesaled and retailed an extremely stylish and tasty array of men’s and women’s wear, shoes, hats, jewellery and other fashion accessories.

For this story I’m concentrating on the menswear.

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Tags: 54 Shorts Gardens, Andy Mackay, Angela Bowie, Antony Price, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Covent Garden, David Bowie, Derek Morton, Kandinsky, Let It Rock, Malcolm McLaren, Paul Smith, Phil Manzanera, Roxy Music, Royal College Of Art, Willy Daly

//Gillett + McLaren, 1983.//

Year-ends and beginnings naturally bring a sense of loss, of time passed and experiences weighed.

For me, 2010 will always mark the deaths of two individuals of personal import and also of lasting significance to our culture: Charlie Gillett and Malcolm McLaren.

These apparently disparate individuals – Gillett 68 and McLaren 64 at their time of passing on, respectively, March 17 and April 8 – shared several characteristics, not least idiosyncratic and uncompromising viewpoints and an abiding interest in bringing vanguard music into the mainstream.

Charlie was among folk and popular music’s most prominent enthusiasts – though he never liked the phrase, it is his achievement that “world music” entered western lives – and, as art consultant Bernd Wurlitzer wrote in 2008: “Malcolm McLaren is and has been an artist in the purest sense of the word for his entire adult life.”

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Tags: Bernd Wurlitzer, Charlie Feathers, Charlie Gillett, Duck Rock, Elvis Costello, Flaco Jiminez, Geraint Watkins, Ian Dury, Jimi Hendrix, Johnnie Allan, Leadbelly, Les Chats Sauvages, Let It Rock, Malcolm McLaren, Nick Lowe, Peter Grant, Puccini, Ry Cooder, Sex Pistols, Syd Barrett, Velvet Underground, Wynonie Harris

These are exterior shots of the incarnations of 430 King’s Road since the early 60s.

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Tags: Bill Fuller, Carol derry, Hung On You, Jane Ormsby-Gore, Let It Rock, Malcolm McLaren, Michael Rainey, Mr Freedom, Paradise Garage, Peter York, Seditionaries, SEX, The 430 Boutique, Tommy Roberts, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Trevor myles, Vivienne Westwood, Worlds End