//Shopping list/instructions written for me by my employer in 1978. Advance was the dry cleaners in Edgware Road. I’m not now sure about Stanton Freres; was it the local off-licence?//

I left school and home when I was 17 and, on the dole in 1978, supplemented my income working for a woman in her late 30s whose sugar daddy had put her up in a flat in a mansion block off Edgware Road. He rarely visited, and in fact died while I was in her employ. The family forbade her from attending the funeral and I realise now her tenancy was likely quite shaky.

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Tags: Edgware Road, Holt's, Hyde Park Square, Joe Strummer, Marble Arch, Paddington, Pat Booth, Richard Young, Roddy Lewellyn, Safeway, Stanton Freres, Tramp

My recent post about the Mr Freedom designs in the V&A collection sparked some memories from graphic artist Ian Harris, who sends this 1972 photograph of himself in a Mr Freedom hamburger print shirt:

//Ian Harris with his then-wife Maggie, Brighton, UK, 1972. Ian Harris Collection//

//Mr Freedom hamburger print shirt in the V&A’s collection. Note appliqué//

In the 1972 photo, the shirt’s hamburger appliqué is obscured; Harris had worked for Mr Freedom partner Tommy Roberts at his 60s boutique Kleptomania, and gave the late Roberts a number of items relating to his career a few years back. Included was the appliqué which Harris had kept for many years.

As Harris points out, his wife Maggie, a model, is sporting an Angie Bowie-influenced look in the photo above. Here she is in another early 70s shot, taken outside John and Lyris Mann’s Kensington boutique Strictly For The Birds:

//Maggie outside 4 Holland Walk, Kensington, London, 1971. Ian Harris Collection//

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Tags: Ann Green, Equinox, Holland Street, Ian Harris, Jimmy Page, John Mann, Kensington, Kleptomania, Lyris Mann, Richard Young, Strictly For The Birds