Tomorrow I’ll be talking to interiors, homewares and textile designer Sue Timney about the fashion legacy of the King’s Road, the two-and-a-half mile thoroughfare in west London’s Chelsea where the late Mary Quant kicked off the boutique boom by opening her clothes shop Bazaar at 135a in 1955.
Continue reading Talking Fashion and the King’s Road with design legend Sue Timney
The jury is out on this autumn’s relaunch of the print edition of venerated British style magazine The Face; as I suggested here it’s going to take more than one splashy issue to assess whether the proposition has legs as we enter the 2020s (next May will mark the 40th anniversary of the founding of The Face by Nick Logan).
//Outtakes of the eight women featured in London Belles, published in the December 7 1973 issue of West One magazine. Photography © John Bishop. No reproduction without permission//
Although high fashion may be a thing of the past, what has replaced it is individuality and freedom to express. Women like these now make up their own minds about what they are and what they wear. Perhaps the rest of us should get the message and start being living fashion.
West One, December 7, 1973
I’m really honoured that veteran fashion photographer John Bishop has granted me this exclusive to show previously unpublished outtakes from the landmark London Belles feature he shot for the 1970s British magazine West One.
Out today, the November 2017 issue of British GQ includes a 10-page feature on my forthcoming book The Story Of The Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture.
When innovatory British men’s magazine Club International was launched in 1972, editor Tony Power and art director Steve Ridgeway assembled a diverse pool of contributors, including jazzer, art critic and cultural commentator George Melly, the Stately Homo Quentin Crisp, Rocky Horror Show founder Richard O’Brien, former White Panther Mick Farren, photographers David Parkinson, Mick Rock and Karl Stoecker, illustrators Bush Hollyhead and Brian Grimwood and the design studio Hipgnosis.
Continue reading Audacious early 70s Hipgnosis fashion shoots for Club International
Images of the novelty t-shirt designs détourned by the late Malcolm McLaren for sale in Seditionaries in 1978 are rare, which is why this shot of Apollonia Van Ravenstein and Ara Gallant from a spread in a late 70s issue of L’Uomo Vogue is extra special.
Here is a selection of amazing images featured in new exhibition North: Identity, Photography, Fashion, which is open to the public from today at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery.
Continue reading Identity, Photography, Fashion: Images from new exhibition North
“Piggy was a special dreamer” Judy Nylon
“Piggy got me my first job with Helmut Newton” Yvonne Gold
“He was an amazing character, funny, exuberant, outgoing, such fun to be with. Everybody wanted to be his friend” Tony Hall
Before David Gandy, before Nick Kamen, there was David “Piggy” Worth.
To celebrate the opening next week of a new exhibition of work by photographer Sheila Rock, here is a selection of her early fashion styling.
Apologies for not posting for a while; I am currently focusing energies on my book Legacy: The story of The Face, which is published by Thames & Hudson in autumn 2017.
Launched in 1980 by print publishing pioneer Nick Logan – the editor of the NME during its ’70s glory years, the man who also founded Smash Hits, Arena, Arena Homme Plus, Frank and Deluxe – The Face magazine brought the news on the dizzying developments of popular culture for two decades.
Continue reading Talking about Legacy: The story of The Face at ModMag 2016