Paul Gorman

King’s Road

The origins of the Tits tee: Robert Watts + Products for Implosions Inc

Robert Watts, Implosions Inc, 1966.
//Robert Watts in front of Products by Implosions Inc. Photographer: unknown//

Malcolm McLaren’s adaptation of the infamous Tits t-shirt is one of punk’s most familiar designs, as applied by he and Vivienne Westwood to shirts sold in SEX and Seditionaries, worn by members of the Sex Pistols and replicated hundreds of thousands of times since.

Such is its distorting androgynous power that a version was chosen along with another McLaren/Westwood design – the Cowboys shirt – to represent the core aesthetic of the movement when the forthcoming Costume Institute exhibition Punk: Chaos To Couture was announced earlier this month.

Continue reading The origins of the Tits tee: Robert Watts + Products for Implosions Inc

“I’m very earthy”: Trevor Myles and his Paradise Garage in Harpers & Queen 1971

//Outside 430 King's Road (from left) summer 1971: Unknown, assistant Lisa Petersen, manager Roly Poltock, designer Diana Crawshaw and founder Trevor Myles. Photograph: Julian Allason.//

Harpers & Queen ran this photograph of the short-lived but significant World’s End boutique Paradise Garage in the Shopping Bazaar section of the September 1971 issue.

Continue reading “I’m very earthy”: Trevor Myles and his Paradise Garage in Harpers & Queen 1971

For the first time in 36 years the whole article: Forum June 1976 featuring SEX + Incognito Leather

//Photo detail (from left): SEX customers Danielle, Alan Jones + Chrissie Hynde; Vivienne Westwood; assistant Jordan.//

As a follow-up to my recent post about the rarely seen 1975 interview with Malcolm McLaren in soft porn mag Gallery International, here is another exclusive: for the first time since publication in June 1976, the full article featuring McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop SEX in British sex guide Forum.

Continue reading For the first time in 36 years the whole article: Forum June 1976 featuring SEX + Incognito Leather

The Look Of London: An illustrated guide to the city’s most influential fashion spots 1950-2000

Tomorrow (October 11) is the publication date of The Look Of London, my map collaboration with the pre-eminent modern guide-makers Herb Lester Associates.

“This map is a reminder that London, with all its individuality and character, is still very exciting,” writes Paul Smith in the foreword; he opened at 44 Floral Street WC2 in 1979.

Continue reading The Look Of London: An illustrated guide to the city’s most influential fashion spots 1950-2000

‘Because of the economic crisis, people are trying to consume as fast as possible. Ideas are dead; there aren’t any to express the mood. Fashion is irrelevant’: Malcolm McLaren + SEX, November 1975

//Sex assistant Jordan, Gallery International, Vol 1, no 4.//

It’s unlikely that cities will shake or nations start to rock under the impact of Malcolm McLaren’s sexual revolution. A few people might die though.

Malcolm McLaren, at 30, is a mixture of entrepreneurial cultist, sexual evangelist, businessman, artist, fetishist and political philosopher; a psychotic visionary in the ephemeral subculture of the fashion world.

David May, Gallery International Vol 1 no 4.

In November 1975 – by which time his charges the Sex Pistols had just embarked on live performances – Malcolm McLaren was interviewed by journalist David May at 430 King’s Road, then in full bloom as radical retail venture SEX.

Continue reading ‘Because of the economic crisis, people are trying to consume as fast as possible. Ideas are dead; there aren’t any to express the mood. Fashion is irrelevant’: Malcolm McLaren + SEX, November 1975

‘Pop culture’s one-man production line’ – Tommy Roberts book in new issue of GQ

Tommy Roberts book in GQ Sept 2012

The September 2012 issue of GQ features this David Parkinson photograph of the interior of Tommy Roberts and Trevor Myles’ Mr Freedom at 430 King’s Road.

One of a number of previously-unpublished photographs in Mr Freedom – Tommy Roberts: British Design Hero, this shot captures the extraordinary fit-out Myles and Roberts’ commissioned from pioneering East End design team Electric Colour Company.

Read my post about ECC’s achievements  – with interviews and many illustrations, still the only piece to be published anywhere about this important but sorely neglected group of British artist/designers – here.

Rough Kids, Sex Pistols + Art School Babies: Tommy Roberts in the final issue of The Word

//Pages 108-111, The Word, August 2012.//

Out later this week, the final issue of The Word marks a significant staging post in the story of magazine publishing in the digital age.

Champions of the written word and intelligent discourse about popular culture, the editorial team headed by veteran double-act Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have assembled a fine last edition in which I’m stoked to be included, with an extract from Mr Freedom about Tommy Roberts’ involvement in the mid-70s British music scene (including never-previously revealed details of Roberts’ loaning of rehearsal space to the nascent Sex Pistols, the burglary of his shop City Lights Studio by members of the group and Malcolm McLaren’s interest in managing Ian Dury).

Continue reading Rough Kids, Sex Pistols + Art School Babies: Tommy Roberts in the final issue of The Word

All satin, no tat, 1971: Kansai Yamamoto, Michael Chow, David Parkinson, Tommy Roberts, Barney Wan et al

//From The Sunday Times Magazine, November 28, 1971.//

The joy of writing about a subject as rich as Tommy Roberts is that research turns up an apparently limitless supply of fabulous material.

Even the tangential stuff – such as this from my archive, a spread from a 1971 Sunday Times Magazine  – gets me going.

Continue reading All satin, no tat, 1971: Kansai Yamamoto, Michael Chow, David Parkinson, Tommy Roberts, Barney Wan et al

Amber Butchart talking Mary Quant + Bazaar at 138a King’s Road

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//Frederique Cifuentes photographs Amber Butchart in Chelsea.//

Yesterday we had fun in Chelsea filming fashion historian/DJ Amber Butchart for this summer’s King’s Road Fashion & Music Trail, which is is being launched to visitors to west London’s historic thoroughfare as part of Kensington & Chelsea Council’s InTransit festival in July.

Continue reading Amber Butchart talking Mary Quant + Bazaar at 138a King’s Road