Category: Boutiques
I’ve picked Shop for i-D’s list of legendary London stores
Asked by i-D’s Stuart Brumfitt to chose a favourite London fashion outlet I plumped for Shop, which was run by Pippa Brooks and Max Karie for a decade from the mid-90s in Soho’s Brewer Street (I mistakenly referred to it being at number 5 – as you can see in the photo below it was […]
Another exclusive! Sneak peek inside Malcolm McLaren’s 1975/6 notebook at Be Reasonable Demand The Impossible
Among the exciting exclusives at tomorrow’s event Be Reasonable Demand The Impossible will be a presentation providing a fascinating look inside Malcolm McLaren’s 1975/6 notebook, kept at the time when the Sex Pistols were starting out and he was running the boutique Sex at 430 King’s Road with partner Vivienne Westwood.
‘A lifetime in design taught Tommy Roberts to avoid fashionability’: My chapter on the importance of the late design entrepreneur in new book
“Anyone who has wondered how the Britain of utility furniture and wartime rationing managed to evolve into Cool Britannia will find this a remarkable book.” Elizabeth Guffey, State University of New York at Purchase My case study Tommy Roberts: From Kleptomania To Two Columbia Road forms a chapter in new book British Design: Tradition And […]
‘Absolutely London’: Marx, Kenny MacDonald + PiL style
In the histories of London street style, Kenny MacDonald’s King’s Road outlet Marx receives rare mention, yet from the mid-70s this unusual and tucked-away boutique was important in the development of the type of English tailoring-with-a-twist which has subsequently dominated a strand of menswear around the world.
Eddie, Elvis + Gene: Let It Rock’s glitter-printed tailored and customised t-shirts based on James Dean’s in Rebel Without A Cause
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 […]
From Vive la Commune! in 1881 to Vive le Rock! in 1972: How a Chinese Communist Party pamphlet inspired one of the great Malcolm McLaren designs
//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 […]
Subjective Reality: Steven Meisel’s film for Miu Miu A/W 15 tips a wink to Seditionaries
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.
I Groaned With Pain: Malcolm McLaren’s own t-shirts to feature in exhibition of status quo-disrupters
Two of Malcolm McLaren’s t-shirts from the very first production run of I Groaned With Pain – the notorious text design produced with Vivienne Westwood in 1974 – will be featured in Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges, the exhibition I am co-curating with David Thorp at Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery this autumn. I Groaned With […]
The story of the Sex shop leather hood: From harmless fetish attire (as sported by David Bowie?) to theatre of cruelty design totem
//Left: Detail of photo of model posing in leather Sex hood, autumn 1974. Photo: © David Parkinson. Right: David Bowie in leather hood, summer 1974, Sherry Netherland Hotel, New York. Photo: Dana Gillespie// My recent post about David Bowie’s visits in 1974 to 430 King’s Road when it was in its Too Fast To Live […]