Paul Gorman

T-Shirts

Mr Freedom designs at the V&A: ‘When what has been considered bad taste is suddenly found to be invigorating’

V+AArchive-MrFreedomWingedBoots2

“There is a moment when ‘good taste’ becomes dead; what has been considered ‘bad’ is suddenly found to be invigorating. Fashion today has little to do with la mode and the tacky is often accepted as an essential part of the necessary ‘total’ look. It can be fun.”

Cecil Beaton, introduction to the catalogue for the 1971 V&A exhibition Fashion: An Anthology

Recent visits to the V&A’s Archive of Art & Design have proved fruitful, particularly a viewing earlier this week of the collection of  Pop Art clothing sold through London boutique Mr Freedom in the late 60s and early 70s.

V+AArchive-MrFreedomGodBlessWoolworthstop
//Design: Diana Crawshaw, 1971//
V+AArchive-MrFreedomPKOfftop
//Kiss Off t-shirt, Jim O’Connor, 1971//
V+AArchive-MrFreedomRamalamadingdongtshirt
//Design Christopher Snow/Trevor Myles, body design: Diana Crawshaw, 1971//
V+AArchive-MrFreedomUniversityofWishfulThinkingtshirt
//Design: Pamla Motown, 1971//

V+AArchive-MrFreedomSpottedJockeyJacket

Continue reading Mr Freedom designs at the V&A: ‘When what has been considered bad taste is suddenly found to be invigorating’

London punk demi-monde Polaroids from Jonathan Ross: The return of Chrissie Hynde + Kate Simon with Tamasin Day-Lewis, Gina Louthan, Ruth Marten, Judy Nylon, Patti Palladin, Jon Savage and…John Betjeman

//All photos (c) Jonathan Ross//

Here are more previously unpublished images from London’s punk demi-monde.

Coincident to receiving Joe Stevens’ photograph of the pre-Pretenders Chrissie Hynde and photographer Kate Simon in Malcolm McLaren’s Sex Pistols Nude Boy shirts, collector/gallerist/Londoner Jonathan Ross supplied me with this fabulous selection of Polaroids taken at his west London house in the same period.

These include Hynde and Simon as well as their fellow Americans-about-town, the performers Judy Nylon and Patti Palladin and artist/tattooist Ruth Marten, writers Tamasin Day-Lewis and Jon Savage, Ross himself, his girlfriend Gina Louthan and Sir John Betjeman.

Continue reading London punk demi-monde Polaroids from Jonathan Ross: The return of Chrissie Hynde + Kate Simon with Tamasin Day-Lewis, Gina Louthan, Ruth Marten, Judy Nylon, Patti Palladin, Jon Savage and…John Betjeman

‘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

Dennis & Iggy get their tits out

In these 70s shots Dennis Hopper and Iggy Pop are both wearing the so-called “tits tee” – the design which started out as an art-school project in the late 60s, became a novelty item, then a punk classic and more recently was a Haiti disaster fundraiser.

I investigated the story of the tits tee here.

Blessed & Blasted: You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On! 10.1974

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 Bernie Rhodes and realised with contributions from friends Malcolm McLaren (who wrote the slogan) and Gerry Goldstein.

Of course, it is best known for carrying the following band name: “Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS”.

I investigated its history in THE LOOK and also here. By publishing the list with links today I aim to dive deeper to demonstrate the tract’s range beyond popular culture.

Hence the references to artists David Holmes, Mel Ramos and Patrick Heron (and his campaign against The Tate), the literature of Alfred Bester, David Cooper, George Dangerfield, Konstantin Paustovsky and Bernard Wolfe, the work of  radical journalists Alexander Cockburn and Mervin Jones and the campaigning of political activists Pat Arrowsmith and Marian and Doloures Price.

Such content dates the compilation to October 1974: The Guardian published Heron’s 14,000-word Tate critique over consecutive days between the 12th and 14th of that month; the shirt itself mentions a piece by Jones in the New Statesman on October 4 and also an Elton John interview in the NME on September 25 (in fact the issue was dated September 28).

Alongside the call-girl phone number taken from local newsagents there are such quizzical references as that for former Playboy Club UK head Victor Lownes: “To be avoided first thing in the morning”.

Is this because one of the contributors had encountered him leaving his club Stocks, just a few hundred yards from SEX along the King’s Road?

Continue reading Blessed & Blasted: You’re Gonna Wake Up One Morning And Know What Side Of The Bed You’ve Been Lying On! 10.1974