“This was my first attempt at making a Sex Pistols T-shirt. I wanted to create something of a stir”
Malcolm McLaren, 2005
An extremely rare and controversial T-shirt from the first run produced by Malcolm McLaren in the early spring of 1976 for the new group he managed, the Sex Pistols, is up for sale tomorrow at London auctioneers Bonhams.
Continue reading Extremely rare Sex Pistols/Smoking Boy shirt up for sale
As befits a sorely-missed man of singular style and taste, the catalogue for the forthcoming sale Furniture Pimp: The Collection Of Jim Walrod is an absolute treat.
//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.
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) were part of a regional US trend for wild and usually wildly-named clothing stores sparked by eccentric retail ventures such as Granny Takes A Trip in England.
As I discovered through contact with vintage dealer/expert Ben Cooney, these are the places who showed at the National Boutique Show in NYC and broadcast their wares from the back pages of Baron Wolman’s fashion/music mag Rags: A Long Time Comin’ in San Anselmo, The Bead Experience in Baltimore, The Great Linoleum Clothing Experiment in LA, Bouncing Bertha’s Banana Blanket and Jenny Waterbags in New York, Mom’s Apple Grave in San Francisco…you get the picture.
Granny’s occupied a totemic status for the people who operated these outlets; Slobodzian visited London on a buying spree in 1970 and naturally dropped in at 488 King’s Road. “What a trip it was,” he told me in 2008.“Every piece fit like a glove right off the rack. The craftmanship and choice of fabric was amazing.”
Now Slobodzian’s Granny’s suits as featured on The Look blog are in this Friday’s Pop Culture sale at Christie’s along with two shirts from Bouncing Bertha’s Banana Blanket.
Here’s Rod Stewart in the same paneled velvet suit design as Lot 55 in the sale:
Read The Look post here.
Find out more about the Pop Culture sale here.
Cassandra Tondro has uploaded pages from Rags Magazine here.
M.Goldstein’s Nathaniel Lee Jones is on fire at the moment; on the heels of next week’s Reginald Alan Westaway exhibition in Prague, his awesome 9ft-high robot Cygan goes on sale at Christie’s Out Of The Ordinary auction on September 5.