Look sharp! In conversation with Mark Powell at Sartorial Style at the V&A, 2pm, Saturday, March 18
Later this month I will be in conversation with British menswear legend Mark Powell at the V&A’s Sartorial Style day.
Author: Paul Gorman
What’s it going to be then, eh? An ‘unforgettable evening of typewriters, music, rough cider and poison-pen letters’
Tomorrow is Anthony Burgess’s centenary; would that I could, I’d be in Manchester, specifically at the Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, home to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for its celebration of the great fellow with an “unforgettable evening of typewriters, music, rough cider and poison-pen letters”.
Before We Were Men: With David Gwinnutt, John Maybury, Ian Massey + Jeffrey Hinton at the National Portrait Gallery on March 23
I am one of the guests of the photographer David Gwinnutt at an event being staged next month to coincide with the opening of his forthcoming exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery. Before We Were Men showcases Gwinnutt’s documentation – with hand-held camera and exclusive use of natural light – of creative London in the 1980s. […]
Apollonia Van Ravenstein + Ara Gallant in originals of Seditionaries Mickey & Minnie and Exposé t-shirts
Images of the novelty t-shirt designs détourned by the late Malcolm McLaren for sale in Seditionaries in 1978 are rare, which is why this shot of Apollonia Van Ravenstein and Ara Gallant from a spread in a late 70s issue of L’Uomo Vogue is extra special.
Curious, humorous and anonymous: Ian Harris’s Argos art postcard interventions
Ian Harris is a man of many parts, having been at various stages in his life a successful graphic artist, fashion designer, homewares retailer and musician/performer, notably with late 60s blues-rock group The Earth and as his mod revival alter ego Terry Tonik. Just this week Harris let me in on a curious, humorous and anonymous public intervention […]
Bend Sinister: Trump The Toad
“This choice of a title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life.” Vladimir Nabokov, from the introduction to the 1963 edition of Bend Sinister Donald Trump’s nightmarish occupancy of the US presidency has occasioned quite a few literary comparisons, causing […]
Lives less ordinary: Jane England’s Turn And Face The Strange documents 70s cultural and social churn
Jane England’s Turn And Face The Strange is a valuable addition to the documentation of the social and cultural churn occurring at the edges of society in the 1970s.
The Paradise Garage Mustang pops up in mid-70s early learning book
As punk expert/collector and design academic Paul Burgess notes, references to 430 King’s Road turn up in the most surprising places. So thanks to him for notifying me about this photograph of the coolest address in pop culture – and in particular the tiger stripe-flocked Ford Mustang which adorned the street outside during the Paradise Garage phase […]
The Stiff Records clock: When You Kill Time You Murder Success
Stiff Records was on fire in 1977. The British independent record label, with owners Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson snapping up acts and art director Barney Bubbles applying his unsurpassable skills to the visualising of their music, came straight out of the traps 40 years ago this month with the release of the first ‘punk’ LP Damned […]
‘Extraordinary… transgressive’: Malcolm McLaren’s great lost fashion collection
On the collapse of their design partnership in October 1983 after showcasing of the collection Worlds End 1984 in Paris and London, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood went their separate ways.