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.
Design
Four out-of-this-world Barney Bubbles pieces and a wild Practical Styling bookcase to feature in the Out Of The Ordinary sale at Christie’s in September
//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.
PRINT @SHOWStudio: Interviewed by Lou Stoppard and shots from my magazine archive
The launch of SHOWStudio’s new series PRINT features an interview with me by editor Lou Stoppard about my magazine archive.
There is also a section dedicated to images from the archive, including front covers, spreads and ads.
Continue reading PRINT @SHOWStudio: Interviewed by Lou Stoppard and shots from my magazine archive
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 Pain is named after the first four words of the paragraph of text McLaren lifted from beat writer Alexander Trocchi’s erotic novel Helen And Desire (published in 1954 by Olympia Press under the pseudonym Francis Lengel).
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 Too Young To Die incarnation prompted Facebook friend and DJ Graham “Sugarlump” Evans to alert me to Polaroid photographs of David Bowie trying out make-up, hair and styling options in preparation for his Diamond Dogs tour of the US that year.
In one, as Evans points out, Bowie posed in a leather hood of similar style to the model sold at 430 as it was transformed over a period of six months from TFTL to fetish emporium Sex.
‘They had the t-shirt off his back’: The 40th anniversary of the creation of the notorious Cowboys t-shirt + the obscenity debate it sparked in the pages of The Guardian
This month – specifically July 26 – marks the 40th anniversary of the introduction for sale of Malcolm McLaren’s notorious Cowboys t-shirt in Sex, the revolutionary boutique he operated at 430 King’s Road with Vivienne Westwood.
The shirt’s status as the most provocative of all punk designs is enhanced by the fact that it made waves immediately: the same day the shirt went on sale, the first customer to wear it in public was arrested. Within 24 hours, the store itself was raided for indecency.
David Bowie’s unwitting role in the transformation of 430 King’s Road from Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die to SEX
It is a little known fact that David Bowie was an occasional visitor to 430 King’s Road when it was operating as Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die.
This manifestation of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s revolutionary boutique – which paid design tribute to the fetishistic studded leather attire of Britain’s early 60s Ton Up Boys and rockers and sold the cult clothing associated with 40s mobsters and Latino zoot suit rioters – succeeded the 50s outlet Let It Rock in the early spring of 1973, as noted at the time by the fashion writer Catherine Tennant in British Vogue.
Print @ ShowStudio: Lou Stoppard on the abiding allure of inspirational and off-the-map magazines
//Magazines from my archive (clockwise from top left): Creem, August 1974; Grand Royal #3, 1995; Club International, August 1973; Harpers & Queen, October 1976//
//After Dark, September 1974; Ben Is Dead #26, 1996//
I’m one of the contributors to Print, writer Lou Stoppard’s forthcoming celebration of the great fashion and music magazines of the past and present.
In search of the entirely unexpected: Barney Bubbles among Print magazine’s Unsung Heroes Of Design
For its 75th anniversary issue, US visual culture publication Print has selected Barney Bubbles as one of six “unsung heroes of design”.
Barney Bubbles designs go regional at the National Museum Cardiff + Ludlow Fringe Art Trail
The regions are where it’s at these days, so we are told, and naturally Barney Bubbles designs can be found in the thick of it.