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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 […]
Filming continued yesterday 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’s InTransit festival in July. We will be covering all the boutique manifestations at 430 King’s Road; for a start I plumped for its incarnation as […]
British Design From 1948: Innovation In The Modern Age – the new book accompanying the forthcoming show at the V+A – is a bumper edition: 400 pages weighing in at 5lbs. It’s cheering to see Barney Bubbles’ design Ian Dury With Love granted upfront prominence; the poster is in select company given special treatment by […]
If you’re in Austin TX – and there’s a chance you might be since hundreds of thousands of people have descended on the city for the annual SXSW film/music/interactive conflab taking place there this week – try and nip along to the Ray Ban Legendary Visions house at 78 Rainey Street on the eastside for […]
This is The Malcolm, the award designed by Marc Newson for the visual arts bienniale Performa; the inaugural award was presented a couple of weeks back by Greil Marcus and Lou Reed to the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson for his 12-hour piece Bliss. Honouring the late Malcolm McLaren, The Malcolm goes to artists under 40 […]
Yesterday I was visited by a camera crew for an interview about the behind-the-scenes individuals who have made the difference to British popular music over the years. The team, from Kobalt Productions in Berlin, are producing the documentary for Franco-German arts channel ARTE. The director is Simon Witter, who has a fine pedigree in journalism […]
My theorising over the roots of the Cowboys t-shirt has uncovered the true source of the main image: a 1969 drawing by the artist Jim French reproduced in a 1974 issue of his magazine Manpower!. French has an international following for his gay-themed photographic + illustrative work, via his Colt Studio image-bank and work as […]
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 […]
“Maybe somehow the desire for knowledge is back, and to be glamorous will be to have a big brain. That’s why I believe that the stars of the future aren’t designers or musicians, they’re teachers. Because people are searching for answers, they’re searching for content. A college professor is much more glamorous than an actor.” […]
Sixty years after Blast, the You’re Gonna Wake Up t-shirt adopted the same truculent tone and diffuse dialectic to ring the alarms amid a culture rendered flaccid by the failure of the 60s dream. You’re Gonna Wake Up – which went on sale in SEX in the late autumn of 1974 – was conceived by […]