Ahead of Tommy Roberts’ appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Midweek and London Live 94.9’s Robert Elms Show tomorrow, there has been a flurry of media mentions of the mould-breaking boutiques with which he was involved.
Mr Freedom + Kleptomania in Vogue and on the BBC as Tommy Roberts takes to the airwaves
All satin, no tat, 1971: Kansai Yamamoto, Michael Chow, David Parkinson, Tommy Roberts, Barney Wan et al
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.
Cover of Mr Freedom – Tommy Roberts: British Design Hero
Photoshoot for the Tommy Roberts book: Mr Freedom winged boots, City Lights Studio suit, Practical Styling carrier bag, Jane Wealleans’ fabric print and much much more
Here’s a sneak iPhone peak from yesterday’s photoshoot for my forthcoming book about Tommy Roberts.
Tommy’s son and accomplished photographer/cameraman Keith set up a studio in a room at his furniture emporium Two Columbia Road and shot around 50-plus garments and artefacts to go with the 300-odd images already planned for the book.
I snapped these on my phone in downtime; forgive the quality – hopefully they convey the flavour of the exercise.
Keith photographed a cornucopia of goodies, including two pairs of Mr Freedom’s famous winged boots, a carrier bag for Tommy’s 80s shop Practical Styling, a suit from his 70s boutique City Lights Studio (lent to us by another design hero Lloyd Johnson) and much more besides.
Tommy Roberts: Peace ‘n’ love in Paris
Tommy Roberts reminisces about the look of 1967:
By 1967 Haight Ashbury hippie culture had taken off in London.
At Kleptomania – my boutique around the corner from Carnaby Street at 10 Kingly Street – it was embraced with gusto.
Out went red guardsman’s tunics, Union Jack kipper ties, Victorian-style lacy mini dresses, soul music and anything to do with “Swinging London”.
In came trumpet-sleeved kaftans, Gypsy fringed shawls, psychedelic posters, joss sticks, peace ‘n’ love badges, Frank Zappa and Jefferson Airplane.
Tommy Roberts: A Display At Mr Freedom
Mr Freedom was as much an event as a boutique, described by the London Evening News in 1970 as a “spectacle like no other show on earth, taking place down the King’s Road non-stop, six days a week”.
Here Tommy Roberts reflects on some of the extraordinary in-store displays commissioned from young artists and designers.
Bowie Boys by Tommy Roberts
I am currently working with Tommy Roberts on a book about his life and career in fashion. Tommy has been assembling a selection of anecdotes and stories which will feature as occasional tasters here over the coming months.
This reminiscence stems from the period in the early 70s when Tommy operated City Lights Studio. Situated at 54 Shorts Gardens WC2 with a darkly glamorous interior design realised by Electric Colour Company’s Andrew Greaves + Jeffrey Pine, City Lights was the first fashion store in London’s Covent Garden, the neighbourhood then dominated by the capital’s fruit and veg market.
City Lights Studio, which came into being at the end of 1972, was a fashion emporium I created in tandem with Willy Daly, a colleague and friend since we had worked together at Mr Freedom.
City Lights was situated in an imposing high-ceilinged loft atop a building in Covent Garden. Our studio designed, wholesaled and retailed an extremely stylish and tasty array of men’s and women’s wear, shoes, hats, jewellery and other fashion accessories.
For this story I’m concentrating on the menswear.
TON: Paul Reeves’ Wiltshire farmhouse – A Collector’s Dream
I have known the Arts & Crafts connoisseur, collector and dealer Paul Reeves since the early Noughties when I approached him for the second edition of my fashion x music book The Look; Paul’s previous career as a designer took in such important 60s and 70s labels and boutiques as Sam Pig In Love, Alkasura and The Universal Witness.
From the off we got on like a house on fire and became firm friends; he was a major contributor to my Tommy Roberts book and the ever-generous Paul has often hosted Caz and I at his wonderful Wiltshire farmhouse.
Invitation to the 1970 opening of Universal Witness in Fulham Road: Paul Reeves’ taste-making brilliance, George Hardie’s graphic excellence + David Bowie’s bippity-boppity hat…
Here’s another treasure from the trove of Design magazines given to me by the designer Paul Walters; the invitation for the opening of Paul Reeves’ west London boutique Universal Witness in November 1970.
Inside Fiorucci’s first store in Milan in the early 70s
I am extremely grateful to artist and designer Paul Walters for his gift of dozens of issues of Design magazine dating to the dawn of the 1970s.
These are being catalogued and added to the collection I already have of the title; some were donated by Paul’s fellow artist and designer Steve Thomas a few years ago.
Design was founded in the mid-60s by the Design Council precursor the Council of Industrial Design, and back issues are a goldmine of visuals and text about most aspects of the design world, from interiors, posters and packaging to product innovation, architecture and popular culture.
I’m going to post a selection of stories that have caught my eye over the coming months, starting with the image at the top of the post: a rarely seen view inside Elio Fiorucci’s first boutique, which he opened in Milan’s Galleria Passerella in late 1972.
Fiorucci was much inspired, to put it politely, by Trevor Myles and Tommy Roberts’ pop-art fashion outlet Mr Freedom – which had gone out of business in the spring of 1972 – and commissioned artist Stan Peskett, who had produced murals for Roberts, to create a space which engaged customers with a similar energy: the yellow and red colour scheme was extended to the exposed piping and venting with insignia of sunrays emanating from fluffy clouds hovering over the clothing racks. Stan, who I interviewed a couple of years ago for my Malcolm McLaren biography, has described his interior for Fiorucci as ‘an installation’.
Coincidentally, an ad in the same issue of Design featured an image of a model in Mr Freedom clothes which had appeared in Nova magazine the previous year. The advert was for the architecture and interiors publication Abitare, which continues to this day – see here.
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