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Category: Chelsea

1970s

Lunch with Messrs Hell + Riviera

I’ve had few, if any, lunches as enjoyable as last week’s hook-up with Richard Hell and Jake Riviera for a piece I am writing for GQ magazine. Richard and Jake first met outside CBGB in March 1976, having been introduced by photographer Roberta Bayley, who was working the club door that night. With Dr Feelgood’s […]

February 10, 2014
1970s

Photography: David Parkinson shoots Acme Attractions

I’ve been enjoying researching materials relating to the late photographer David Parkinson for a feature for GQ magazine, so thought I’d share some of the images I dug out of the Parkinson archive concerning the 70s King’s Road retro clothing store Acme Attractions. Parkinson’s position as fashion editor of Paul Raymond’s sophisticated soft-porn magazine Club […]

January 16, 2014
1970s

Photography: Inside Seditionaries and down the King’s Road 1977 with Homer Sykes

While updating his rich and varied archive, photographer Homer Sykes came across these superb photographs taken inside Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Seditionaries at 430 King’s Road in the spring of 1977. The images capture the air of raw uncertainty surrounding the shop and the McLaren/Westwood coterie in this period. McLaren’s charges the Sex […]

December 17, 2013
1970s

Bravura + brilliance: Tommy Roberts, February 6 1941 – December 10 2012

Sad to note the anniversary today of the death of Tommy Roberts, flamboyant design entrepreneur and subject of my book Mr Freedom. Here – with a selection of images from Mr Freedom – is an extract from an essay I have written about Roberts’ role in the development of design in Britain for Chris Breward […]

December 10, 2013
1970s

Delirious New York: Legends Bobby Busnach + Gerry Visco, The Park Royal Hotel, the South Bronx scene and Boston’s The Other Side

These captivating 70s images stem from the amazing photographic archive of New York DJ legend Bobby Busnach. Many feature Busnach’s friend and muse, the fabulous writer/photographer/performer Gerry Visco, as well as the circles they moved in at NYC’s Park Royal Hotel, Boston disco/bar The Other Side and the nascent hip-hop scene in the South Bronx.

November 22, 2013
1970s

Jim French: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor exhibition + new Colt apparel collection

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor is an exhibition of Polaroids taken by artist, illustrator and print-maker Jim French which opens tonight at New York’s ClampArt gallery. These include studies for French’s 1969 Colt Studio print Longhorns Dance, incorporated by Malcolm McLaren in 1975 in his notorious Cowboys t-shirt design, as sold in Sex and Seditionaries at […]

November 21, 2013
430 King's Road

Iggy Pop’s Wild Thing jacket: Not from Paradise Garage

A few years back I wrote a series of blogs about the so-called “Wild Thing” jacket worn by Iggy Pop on the cover of his and The Stooges’ album Raw Power; in 2008 I had brokered a deal for the jacket designers John and Molly Dove to reissue a t-shirt range – including a version […]

July 22, 2013
430 King's Road

From Alphonso’s the Reading barber to free t-shirts and apples in Seditionaries: The unpindownable Johnny Deluxe dives into his family photo album

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 […]

July 16, 2013