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I’m involved in a couple of events which open in London this week: artist Lucy Harrison’s multi-layered project Carnaby Echoes in the West End and photographer Nick Knight’s exhibition Punk at his Showstudio space in SW1.
The Emporium, the London clothing outlet which inaugurated London’s vintage fashion business, is to close after 27 years. As London’s independent retail fashion scene took the swan-dive from which it never recovered in the mid-80s, so Jon Hale and Jacki Cook’s shop in Greenwich, south-east London, provided a haven of 20th Century style, handpicked with […]
Here’s a selection of photographs from the family photo album of Johnny Deluxe, one of my favourite unpindownable Londoners. Deluxe is an artist, clothes-maker, performer, raconteur and all-round individualist. I’ll let him tell the story behind each. This was taken in March or April 1978. I was wearing a Seditionaries Destroy t-shirt and Boy zip […]
Trevor Myles’ decision to incorporate a flocked and tiger-striped 1966 Ford Mustang as part of his retail space Paradise Garage naturally attracted a lot of attention during the brief existence of this unusual fashion outlet at 430 King’s Road in Chelsea’s World’s End in 1971.
The spirit of great British boutique culture is summoned by a couple of lots in next week’s Pop Culture sale at Christie’s. One is a previously unpublished June 1967 photograph of Jim Hendrix not in Carnaby Street as captioned, but outside the tobacconist Finlay’s, which was in Foubert’s Place. It’s evident from the carrier bag […]
I’ve been acting as a consultant to artist Lucy Harrison on her latest site specific project Carnaby Echoes, which focuses on the culturally fertile area of central London adjacent to Soho. With the starting point of the opening of Murray’s Club in Beak Street in 1913, Harrison is mounting her artistic response to 100 years […]
This is designer Ben Kelly at his 1974 degree show at London’s Royal College Of Art. Kelly adopted the alter-ego The Photo Kid, who is portrayed in the work by which he is standing. The Photo Kid wore clothes – in particular brothel creepers – from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Let It Rock, […]
As demonstrated by my recent post, the west London house of collector/gallerist Jonathan Ross became a hive for the art/boho/punk crowd flooding the capital in the 70s. Among the visitors were Johnny Thunders and Iggy Pop, who both left their marks in different ways.
Fashion shoots were little known aspect of the practice of design studio Hipgnosis, whose co-founder Storm Thorgerson died on Thursday. In line with the approach Thorgerson and his partner Aubrey Powell took with their raft of album sleeve commissions, the series of fashion spreads Hipgnosis produced for Club International in the early 70s were visually […]
Artist/designer Simon Haynes has allowed me access to some of the treasures in his archive. Over the next few weeks I’ll be dipping into it and presenting a selection of artworks, display items, stage sets and graphics he has created over the years.