Thanks to Mr Mondo for turning me onto Glam Idols, a goldmine of early 70s music and fashion images.
Lovingly presented and well credited, many of the photographs on the feed derive from continental European publications, like the 1972 shot above of a German model in a glitter t-shirt from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s 50s outlet Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road.
In January 2012, on a cold night in a print studio in, of all places, Wandsworth, south London, the eminent artist Derek Boshier asked me if I was interested in putting together a monograph of his life’s work with his friend and champion, the writer and curator Guy Brett.
Continue reading Derek Boshier: Rethink/Re-entry published October 5 UK + November 10 US
//Left: Chuck Berry image isolated and bleached out. Right: As it appeared on the t-shirt, worn in this 1973 photograph of singer/songwriter Simon Fisher Turner. Photographer: Unknown//
When they were setting up Let It Rock in 1971, Malcolm McLaren and his original partner in the boutique at 430 King’s Road – Patrick Casey – acquired a cache of posters, showcards and ephemera for 50s rocksploitation movies, including many Continental-language variants.
Continue reading Rock, Rock, Rock! Roots of Let It Rock’s Chuck Berry t-shirt in 50s movie ephemera
//From top left: Chinese Communist Party pamphlet, 1971; McLaren in Let It Rock 1972; Proclamation by Engels and Marx, 1881; Title lettering, Belgian film poster, 1958//
A year or so ago I established the source material for one of the first designs generated by Malcolm McLaren in the fashion partnership he conducted with Vivienne Westwood in the 70s and early 80s.
Now I can reveal the inspiration: text contained in an unprepossessing Communist booklet celebrating the short-lived “Paris Commune” government of 19th Century revolutionary France.
At all times, my acts and my actions in life have stemmed from love or eroticism, as you like it.
Pierre Molinier, The Shaman And Its Creatures
Pierre Molinier, “the man and the painter, the genius and the pervert, the ‘lesbienne’ and the guns lover” is not an easy figure to pin down.
Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges* is the title of the forthcoming exhibition about the creative interplay between a group of remarkable radical artists, poets, writers and activists who initiated, perpetrated and influenced a range of post-war alternatives.
Taking its title from a song on hippie outfit Quintessence’s debut album, Jo Gannon’s documentary Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate – as featured on the BFI’s website – captures the social churn in the west London neighbourhood at the start of the 70s.
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.
//Front and back of Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco and the radical political and military texts used as source material for the design//
There were T-shirts left over from the Wembley Rock & Roll revival festival in our cupboards in South Clapham; we had to do something with them. Sid Vicious liked them just the way they were and was often photographed in the original Vive Le Rock! design. But I needed to throw a few messages across them and reinvent them. So, I married the slogan and images of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis with words and drawings from various texts, using the title of The Anarchist Cookbook as well as the famous phrase of the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durutti.
Malcolm McLaren 2008
Imogen Hunt is a recent graduate from London College Of Fashion who tells me she was inspired by my work to write her thesis for the college’s history of fashion and culture course.
Part of Hunt’s dissertation – on the importance of the Situationist International and King Mob to the development of punk style – is dedicated to an examination of the influences and source material for the double-sided design Vive Le Rock/Punk Rock Disco, which was printed on the front and back of t-shirts and tops first sold in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s King’s Road store Seditionaries in 1978.
It’s flattering to receive praise from a tastemaker of the standing of Gary Warnett, who has posted on his Gwarizm blog about my recent cult magazine chat with SHOWStudio editor Lou Stoppard for her Print project.
