Memories of Dandie Fashions + Paradise Garage + a return to Granny’s

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 Paradise Garage in 1971, operated by Trevor Myles with Chris Snow and Diana Crawshaw.

Crawshaw talked about the brief but important period after the shop had been Mr Freedom (run by Myles and Tommy Roberts) and before it was taken over by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood (of course still resident with World’s End).

We also stopped off at 161 King’s Road (now Proud Gallery) to talk to Alan Holston, manager of the premises when it was Dandie Fashions, and were joined there by Roger Klein, who was close to another Dandie staffer, the late Freddie Hornik.

Having interviewed Granny Takes A Trip founder Nigel Waymouth at 488 earlier this week, we took Klein along to the site he first visited as a music and fashion-mad Californian teenager in 1970. By that time Granny’s was owned by Hornik; within a couple of years Klein was managing Hornik’s LA branch of the boutique.

Find out more about InTransit here.

For a rundown of the fashion history of 430 King’s Road go here.

There’s a great selection of of photos of Alan Holston in Dandie’s heyday here.

My obituary for Freddie Hornik is here.

Roger Klein represents visual artists and performers, including Rumer and Charming Baker.

Diana Crawshaw is a King’s Road stalwart as a palmist at Wilde Ones.

This is Frederique Cifuente’s website, while Proud Gallery has just opened a Justin de Villeneuve exhibition. Details here.

Pre-order signed copies of my new book Mr Freedom – Tommy Roberts: British Design Hero here.