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.
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.
Steven Meisel’s campaign clip for Miu Miu’s autumn/winter 2015 collection tips a knowing wink to Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s 70s label Seditionaries, and in particular the design collage Vive Le Rock/Punk Rock Disco.
//Left: The Ian Dury Cocktail Cabinet. Right: The AC/DC Desk//
//Left: The Rebel, signed ‘Sal ’81’. Right: The Tree Of Drawers//
Four extraordinary works by the late Barney Bubbles are to feature in Christie’s Out Of The Ordinary sale, the annual event which is fast becoming one of the highlights of the auction calendar.
The launch of SHOWStudio’s new series PRINT features an interview with me by editor Lou Stoppard about my magazine archive.
There is also a section dedicated to images from the archive, including front covers, spreads and ads.
Continue reading PRINT @SHOWStudio: Interviewed by Lou Stoppard and shots from my magazine archive
For its 75th anniversary issue, US visual culture publication Print has selected Barney Bubbles as one of six “unsung heroes of design”.
The regions are where it’s at these days, so we are told, and naturally Barney Bubbles designs can be found in the thick of it.
This portrait of Malcolm McLaren was captured among the columns outside the entrance to London’s august British Museum by Andy Rosen in 1983.
In the photograph taken during promotion of the Duck Rock album, which was released at the start of 1983, McLaren sported a rare trenchcoat design from the Witches collection he and Vivienne Westwood debuted on the catwalk that spring.
Continue reading Malcolm McLaren in Witches trenchcoat on the steps of the British Museum 1983
Great news that the British Library has digitised the archive of one of the most important magazines of modern times: Spare Rib.
If you don’t know it or haven’t seen the publication, you are in for a treat. As the British Library’s politics and public life curator Polly Russell says, Spare Rib was “funny, irreverent, intelligent and passionate… a product of its time which is also somehow timeless”.
Continue reading A cause for celebration: Digitisation of all 239 issues of Spare Rib
An under-acknowledged art world connection forged by Malcolm McLaren during his fashion design partnership with Vivienne Westwood was to the godfather of street art, conceptual artist Richard Hambleton.
During his forays in New York in the early 80s, McLaren was struck by Hambleton’s eerie representations of The Shadow Man figure; there was one on a wall in Bethune Street in the West Village, near the studio of McLaren’s photographer friend and ally Bob Gruen.
Continue reading Richard Hambleton + Malcolm McLaren = Witches x The Shadow Man