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“What’s to say, save that his contempt was not reserved solely for the music business? Or the art business. Or the business of being human. There were times when he saw with his own dead eyes. But he had the sight to see through them.” K-LS on the album’s opening track Afoju Ti Ole Riran […]
This short film gives a flavour of Let It Rock, the exhibition about Malcolm McLaren’s engagement with fashion in the 70s and 80s curated by Young Kim and I in Copenhagen earlier this month. We are interviewed along with Kristian Andersen, Copenhagen International Fashion Fair fashion and design director, and our co-exhibitor, US streetwear designer […]
The response to this week’s Malcolm McLaren exhibition Let It Rock has been very encouraging; here are some images which hopefully give an idea of the show’s impact. Running for four days at Copenhagen’s Bella Center as part of the Danish city’s international fashion fair CIFF, the show – curated by me and Young Kim […]
Yet another example of Malcolm McLaren’s astounding design talent is examined across a number of exhibits at the Let It Rock show, which opens at Copenhagen’s Bella Center on Sunday (August 3). In 1972 McLaren expanded his investigations into 50s pop design culture by producing a series of t-shirt designs celebrating the great American rock […]
The idea is to show in clothes and music that, in the post-industrial age, the roots of our culture lie in primitive societies. Malcolm McLaren on Nostalgia Of Mud and Duck Rock, 1983 Thanks to Hiroshi Fujiwara for tipping the wink over one of the sources of visual inspiration fed by Malcolm McLaren into the […]
The exhibition Disobedient Objects opens at the V&A tonight; here curator Catherine Flood – who originated the concept for the show – talks me through five exhibits which embody the spirit of contemporary protest. TEAR GAS MASKS MADE FROM WATER BOTTLES Disobedient objects are often those which are simply to hand and waiting to be […]
In the shop’s various incarnations I made clothes that looked like ruins. I created something new by destroying the old. This wasn’t fashion as a commodity; this was fashion as an idea. From his foreword to The Look: Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion, Malcolm McLaren, 2001 The first exhibition to examine the late cultural […]
Looking forward to the opening tonight of Nick Abrahams’ new work Lions And Tigers And Bears. Abrahams is releasing a companion single which includes a recording of a snail eating a lettuce. snail, eating – from ‘Lions and Tigers and Bears’ from nicholas abrahams on Vimeo. Lions And Tigers And Bears runs at the Horse […]
John Beck and Matthew Cornford’s intelligent and measured book The Art School And The Culture Shed may be a slim volume but it packs a hell of a punch in locating the ravages wreaked on our cultural life over the past 20 years by privatisation, the failings of local councils and town planners and the […]
Six years ago on The Look blog I posted images and memories supplied by Terry Slobodzian, who ran boutiques Explosion and Lacy Lady in the upstate New York town of North Tonawanda in the late 60s and early 70s. Such shops as Slobodzian’s and The People’s Space (run by Tommy Hilfiger in the neighbouring Emira) […]