From the SS16 menswear collections to the people flocking to Somerset House’s current celebration of The Jam, the aesthetic of “clean living under difficult circumstances” (as summarised by The Who’s first manager, Pete Meaden) is at one with what’s happening now in fashion…
Read the rest of my piece – with quotes from Dylan Jones of GQ/London Collections: Men, Soho tailor Mark Powell and Man About Town’s Ben Reardon – on the enduring appeal of Mod here.
The Emporium, the London clothing outlet which inaugurated London’s vintage fashion business, is to close after 27 years.
As London’s independent retail fashion scene took the swan-dive from which it never recovered in the mid-80s, so Jon Hale and Jacki Cook’s shop in Greenwich, south-east London, provided a haven of 20th Century style, handpicked with consummate taste from their carefully accumulated archive of thousands of garments from the 30s to the 70s.
My essay on artist Derek Boshier’s engagement with popular music is in the new catalogue from Pallant House Gallery, home to the forthcoming show Derek Boshier: David Bowie And The Clash.
Johnson & Johnson jacket and shirt, 1973.
These images are from the private view for The Lightbox gallery’s exhibition Snap Crackle & Pop (about British pop art and it’s influence on culture); I contributed exhibits and advice after being approached by BBC TV’s Katherine Higgins (who sure knows her stuff).
This excellent show was opened on Friday by Peter Blake. Among the attendees were John and Molly Dove, Lloyd Johnson, Mike Ross of Ritva and Paul Weller (the subject of the gallery’s current companion exhibition of photographs by Lawrence Watson).
NAME: Jeff Dexter
RESIDES: North London
OCCUPATION: Man about town
Trace the progress of popular culture over the last six decades and you’ll find Jeff Dexter at some of its crucial stages of development: demonstrating the twist to modernists at The Lyceum Ballroom and advising the Beatles on which boots to wear in the early 60s; DJing for the noonday underground at Tiles a few years later and then moving into London’s counter-cultural underground as a mainman at Middle Earth and The Roundhouse, where his Implosion nights set the scene for the rise of such friends as Marc Bolan and David Bowie.
There’s Jeff hanging out at Hung On You, booking bands for the first Glastonbury and Isle Of Wight festivals, managing chart-topping America, announcing The Clash at one of their early gigs and DJing for Paul Weller at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire a couple of years back as part of the Island 50 celebrations.
And now he’s answered the Blokes Of Britain questionnaire:
Hi Jeff. What’s with your look these days?
Eclectic and vintage. I mix anything from the past, from another culture, with the standard look which has been ingrained in me since childhood. I looked at some photos today and realised I’ve been doing this since 1968!
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