//Stetson, embroidered shirt and hand-tooled leather belt from The Emperor Of Wyoming. Photo: David Parkinson for Club International, February 1974.//

Billy Murphy’s boutique The Emperor Of Wyoming was an extremely important staging post not just in the story of British rock and roll fashion but also the development of the vintage scene in this country.

Opened by Murphy at 404 King’s Road in 1972, TEOW specialised in selected items of Westernwear and American clothing at a time when the pickings were slim for such garments in London.

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Tags: Billy Murphy, Club International, David Parkinson, Jesse Mae, The Emperor Of Wyoming, The Westerner, Trevor myles, Worlds End

Find out over at the Barney Bubbles Blog.

TAGS: None

//Kiss Kiss, Go To Work On An Egg, Christopher Logue + Tom Salter, 1968.//

//Go To Work On An Egg, Mather & Crowther, 1964.//

“People do love huge pieces of paper”.

So runs the quote heading up a section in V&A curator Catherine Flood’s excellent overview British Posters: Advertising Art & Activism, published by the museum to coincide with its multifarious design celebrations this Olympic year.

And it’s true. We do.

Or we all did, when this vital form was simultaneously a mass-medium and a highly personal communications device, when huge promotional budgets and lack of urban controls resulted in the accretive papering of our street-scapes. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, we gave posters pride of place on the walls of our bedrooms, bedsits and sitting rooms.

//Top left: Your Britain, Fight For It Now, Abram Games, 1942. Right: Keep Death Off The Road, Carelessness Kills, William Little, 1949.//

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Tags: Abram Games, As You Like It, Carateles la Candelaria, Catherine Flood, Christopher Logue, Eduardo Paolozzi, Hapshash And The Coloured Coat, John Morris, Ken Briggs, Lissitzky, M&C Saatchi, Mather & Crowther, Mike McInnerney, Richard Hollis, See Red Women's Workshop, Society Of Revisionist Typographers, Tom Salter, Typoretum, UFO, V&A, William Little

I have a piece on the inclusion of Barney Bubbles in the V&A’s British Design 1948-2012 exhibition in the new issue of Blueprint magazine.

For the full page go here.

Read my summary of the exhibition catalogue here.

Visit Blueprint’s site here.

Tags: Blueprint, British Design: 1948-2012, V&A

//Holding foldout sleeve for the 1972 album Revelations: A Musical Anthology For The Glastonbury Fayre, designed by Barney Bubbles and released in 1972. Photo: Sophie Demay//

Artist/curator Sophie Demay and I are continuing to sort through potential materials for this summer’s exhibition White Noise, which Demay is creating with Etienne Hervy as part of this year’s International Poster & Graphic Design Festival in Chaumont, France.

See more images from the selection process on the Barney Bubbles blog.

Tags: Chaumont, Etienne Hervy, International Poster & Graphic Design Festival, Sophie Demay, The Glastonbury Fayre

This is the front of the jacket of my new book Mr Freedom – Tommy Roberts: British Design Hero.

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Tags: City Lights Studio, Eve Ferrett, Jimi Hendrix, Kleptomania, Mark Summerfield, Paul Jones, Paul Reeves, Paul Smith, Practical Styling

//Build-your-own poster adverts for Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True in music papers published July 1977.//

Selection has started on the Barney Bubbles presence at this summer’s group exhibition about the visual language of music, White Noise: Quand le graphisme fait du bruit (When graphics make the noise) at the 23rd International Poster & Graphic Design Festival in Chaumont, France, from May 26 to June 10.

I have supplied the text for the catalogue and last week met co-curator Sophie Demay to start the exhibit selection; Sophie is creating White Noise with Étienne Hervy, the Chaumont festival artistic director and former editor of French graphics magazine Etapes.

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Tags: Elvis Costello, Etienne Hervy, Experimental JetSet, Graham Parker, James Goggin, Laurent Fétis, My Aim Is True, Oz, Shoboshobo, Sophie Demay, Studio Moniker

I am beguiled by this photograph, which is entitled Pierre’s Breakfast and was taken by Willie Christie at David Hockney’s house in Notting Hill on May 18, 1974.

The identities of the two individuals on the left are a mystery*; with Clark (in the white jumpsuit) are make-up artist Pierre Laroche, Marianne Faithfull and Michael Roberts (then writer/photographer at The Sunday Times, now Vanity Fair’s fashion/style director). Behind the group are a selection of artist Mo McDermott’s signature painted wooden tree sculptures.

Laroche, who had worked at Elizabeth Arden for five years before taking up with rock & roll when he was recruited by Brian Duffy for the cover of David Bowie’s 1973 album Aladdin Sane, engaged Willie Christie for the May 74 session for a potential magazine feature.

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Tags: Aids, Aladdin Sane, Alkasura, Any Day Now, Brian Duffy, Charlton FC, Chelita Secunda, David Bowie, Elizabeth Arden, Henrietta Rous, Humble Pie, John Lloyd, Kevin Cann, Marianne Faithfull, Michael Roberts, Mick Jagger, Mo McDermott, Ossie Clark, Pierre Laroche, Rod Stewart, Roxy Music, Suzy Menkes, The Rocky Horror Show, The Who Lou Reed, Willie Christie

British Design From 1948: Innovation In The Modern Age – the new book accompanying the forthcoming show at the V+A – is a bumper edition: 400 pages weighing in at 5lbs.

It’s cheering to see Barney Bubbles’ design Ian Dury With Love granted upfront prominence; the poster is in select company given special treatment by the book’s designer, Barnbrook’s Daniel Streat. The others are: Cecil Beaton’s 1953 coronation portrait of The Queen, a shot of Damien Hirst’s Notting Hill restaurant Pharmacy and Brian Duffy’s Aladdin Sane portrait of David Bowie.

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Tags: Brian Duffy, Cecil Beaton, Christopher Breward, David Bowie, Ettorre Sotsass Jr, Ghislaine Wood, John hegarty, Michael Bracewell, Paul Smith, Pharmacy, Terence Conran, The Queen, Vivienne Westwood, Zaha Hadid

If you’re in Austin TX – and there’s a chance you might be since hundreds of thousands of people have descended on the city for the annual SXSW film/music/interactive conflab taking place there this week – try and nip along to the Ray Ban Legendary Visions house at 78 Rainey Street on the eastside for a gander at the room collages/installations I have engineered to reflect my take on the look of music.

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Tags: Austin TX, Boy George, Glastonbury Festival, Henry Diltz, Hipgnosis, Jeff Dexter, Judy Nylon, Kate Moross, Mark Powell, NCompass, Nick Ebeling, Nick Lowe, Ray Ban, Sheri Timmons, Steve Pross, Stiff Records, SXSW