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 430 King’s Road and worn by the Sex Pistols and others.
The new issue of Arena Homme + features my interview with publishing legend Nick Logan, who founded the men’s fashion magazine 20 years ago.
Continue reading Interview with Nick Logan in anniversary issue of Arena Homme +
I’m favouring the indigo corduroy version of the Blouson El Americano, the latest triumph from Man Of The World Christophe Loiron’s label Mister Freedom.
Continue reading Mister Freedom’s Blouson El Americano: For the homme de goût
Glam! The Performance Of Style – the exhibition which locates early 70s glam rock in the context of fine art and the interplay between “high” and mass culture – is opening at the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz, Austria later this month.
I was a consultant to Glam!’s curator Darren Pih of Tate Liverpool, where the show opened at the beginning of this year before moving on to Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle for the summer.
Continue reading Glam! The Performance Of Style at Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz
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 black gay community has given kids with holes in their trousers the opportunity to look as glamorous as mannequins on a Paris runway.
“By imitating the Great White Way of success – Vogue magazine, the profiles of glamour, the poses that intimate that…we’re not gonna criticize it, we’re gonna celebrate it, because that’s the Great White Way…
From Fashion TV 1989.
Journalist Dermot Kavanagh’s project to celebrate the life and achievements of the late soul boy footballer Laurie Cunningham moves apace; if you have the opportunity, listen to Kavanagh talking to BBC London 94.9’s Robert Elms today.
Continue reading Steps Ahead: The Laurie Cunningham project moves apace
Herb Schmitz proudly describes himself as a photojournalist.
From the start of his career in London in the late 60s, the Dusseldorf-born Schmitz has turned an unerring eye to all manner of subject matter: seascapes,Turkish gangsters, the WW2 head of the Polish government in exile, the social scene in latterday Shoreditch (where he has operated a studio for more than 25 years)…
In the wake of a recent exhibition at Amsterdam’s Unseen Photo Fair, Schmitz has opened his archive of early 70s fashion photography for me, revealing images of a lost London demi-monde clad by such hallowed enterprises as City Lights Studio (the Covent Garden boutique operated by the subject of my latest book, Tommy Roberts) and Katherine Hamnett’s label Tuttabankem.
MY SPECULATION HERE SPARKED A TRAIL TO THE TRUE SOURCE OF THE MAIN IMAGE: THE ARTIST/PHOTOGRAPHER JIM FRENCH, WHO DREW THE COWBOYS FOR A SERIES CALLED LONGHORNS IN 1969 (SEE LINK AT END OF THIS POST).
The late Malcolm McLaren said he could never remember the origins of one of the most potent designs to emanate from 430 King’s Road in its six-decade history as a fashion emporium: the Cowboys t-shirt.