//Bernard Lansky with Elvis Presley in Lansky Bros, 126 Beale Street, Memphis, 1956.//

I interviewed Bernard Lansky, who has died aged 85, for my first book The Look: Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion early one morning in March 2000 at his menswear store which was by then located in Memphis tourist attraction, the Peabody Hotel.

His son Hal had forewarned me: “You’d better get there early; once the customers start arriving at 8.00am he won’t have time for you.”

Just as their most celebrated client set fire to popular music as a means of cultural expression, so Lansky and his brother Guy (who was bought out in 1980) formed the template for street fashion by servicing a hitherto ignored subculture  – namely the black stylers, hipsters, roustabouts and juke-jointers crowding the city’s segregated area around Beale Street in the post-War period.

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Tags: 1999, Bill Belew, Bruce Weber, Elvis Presley, Graceland, Lansky Bros, Memphis, Michael Gorman, New York Times, Nudie Cohn, Peabody Hotel

I was in the audience at the Beacon Theatre NYC for the 1999 VH1 Divas, where this Whitney Houston performance was recorded.

Her presence during this particular song is electrifying; she exudes vulnerability, a tortured female star (the wrong side of 35 according to the precepts of the global music industry) visibly dealing with the downside of unimaginable fame + fortune.

When Houston wasn’t onstage, she and Bobby Brown were sat a few rows ahead.

They were looped, out there. Brown was wearing what looked like an original South Beach Leather loose-stitched suit (a la Al Green on the sleeve of his Greatest Hits) complete with Po’Boy cap.

When Houston was onstage, he tore it up in the audience, cheering and hollering his support.

I love the skittering It’s Not Right But It’s OK. She nailed it that night.

Tags: 1999, beacon Theatre, Bobby Brown, South Beach Leather, VH1, VH1 Divas, Whitney Houston

Donald Smith, Lloyd Johnson + Chelsea Space assistant Emily Rubner.

Yesterday I met Lloyd Johnson to discuss next spring’s exhibition celebrating his career as Pop’s Pontiff Of Cool (a title I shamefully bestowed upon him in a Mojo feature a decade or so ago).

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Tags: 1999, Chelsea Space, Donald Smith, Emily Dubner, Lloyd Johnson, Mojo