I am again partnering with Sonos for a fresh brace of exhibitions at the home audio specialist’s London and New York stores.

Following the successful Song Stories: David Bowie displays in each outlet, I have organised two shows to mark the recent publication of my book The Story Of The Face. Each has site-tailored exhibits, including original articles and covers from my magazine library, scaled-up enlargements and precious archival material provided by The Face founder, editor and publisher Nick Logan.

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Tags: Annie Lennox, Chloë Sevigny, Greene Street, International Women's Day, Madness, Method Man, Mobb Deep, New York Fashion Week, New York Times, Nick Logan, Peter Ashworth, Seven Dials, Soho, Sonos, Village Voice

Over time our assumptions of Pop have become more narrow. That word needs to be shook open a little bit. That history needs to be displaced a little bit. To allow for the diversity you have to go back to a more open idea of what Pop could be.
Darsie Alexander and Ryan Bartholomew, curators, International Pop

Today’s New York Times features Derek Boshier’s 1961 painting Special K as part of the newspaper’s coverage of International Pop, the new exhibition which addresses the fallacy that the movement was the preserve of the US and Britain.

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Tags: Andy Warhol, Darsie Alexander, Minneapolis, New York Times, Ryan Bartholomew, Special K, Walker Arts Centre, Yokoo Tadanori

//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

“Maybe somehow the desire for knowledge is back, and to be glamorous will be to have a big brain.
That’s why I believe that the stars of the future aren’t designers or musicians, they’re teachers. Because people are searching for answers, they’re searching for content. A college professor is much more glamorous than an actor.”

Malcolm McLaren, 1995.

Thanks to Steven Daly for sending me Holly Brumbach’s interview with Malcolm, Being And Nothingness And Kate Moss, New York Times, May 21, 1995.

Tags: 1995, Malcolm McLaren, New York Times, Steven Daly