//Robert Watts in front of Products by Implosions Inc. Photographer: unknown//

Malcolm McLaren’s adaptation of the infamous Tits t-shirt is one of punk’s most familiar designs, as applied by he and Vivienne Westwood to shirts sold in SEX and Seditionaries, worn by members of the Sex Pistols and replicated hundreds of thousands of times since.

Such is its distorting androgynous power that a version was chosen along with another McLaren/Westwood design – the Cowboys shirt – to represent the core aesthetic of the movement when the forthcoming Costume Institute exhibition Punk: Chaos To Couture was announced earlier this month.

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Tags: Alice Cooper, Andy Warhol, Charlie Watts, Costume Institute, Fluxus, Jizz Inc, Mrs Gorman, Punk: Chaos To Couture, Robert Watts, Shopping, The American Supermarket, Thomas Kellein, Zandra Rhodes

//(c) 100% Boy George.//

On April 9 George O’Dowd and I will be in conversation at the V&A; the subject is David Bowie’s visual style.

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Tags: David Bowie Is, Freddie Buretti, Kansai Yamamoto, V&A

//Kenny putting on make up, Nan Goldin, Boston, 1973 //

Perhaps it is a matter of displacement – that slippery moment when art becomes commerce, shifting back again into the cultural arena as another kind of commodity. The fact is, even today, few among us are willing to acknowledge that certain mass culture forms and practices may comprise the most significant ‘culture’ of our time, precisely because of their ‘popular’ characteristics.

Marcia Tucker and William Olander, New Museum Of Contemporary Art, 1988.

In the 25 years since Tucker and Olander made this statement, the displacement they sought to define has become, if anything, more slippery.

For this reason alone, Liverpool Tate curator Darren Pih must be applauded for negotiating such tricky waters with Glam! The Performance Of Style, the exhibition he has curated in an attempt to locate the early 70s glam-rock phenomenon in the context not just of a certain area of artistic practice of the period but also more broadly the interplay between “high” and mass culture.

//Fashion spread featuring Mr Freedom and Ossie Clark designs, Nova, May 1970 //

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Tags: Candy Darling, Darren Pih, Glam!, John MacManus, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Marcia Tucker, Nan Goldin, Nova, Ossie Clark, Peter Hujar, Tate Liverpool, Trevor myles, William Olander

I’m quoted in today’s article in UK Sunday newspaper The Observer about the factual failings surrounding the punk clothing collection of the New York Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s Costume Institute.

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Tags: Alan Jones, Allen Jones, Andrew Bolton, Costume Institute, Derek Jarman, Edward Helmore, Jubilee, Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Naked Cowboys, Vivienne Westwood

//Jacket, Beatbooks 62 from collage by Norman Ogue Mustill, 1967.//

The new Beatbooks catalogue returns Andrew Sclanders to his primary preoccupation with the creative outpourings of the American Beats and their fellow travellers.
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Tags: Andrew Sclanders, Charles Bukowski, Norman Ogue Mustill, William Burroughs

A little-known design by Barney Bubbles – the graphics genius and subject of my book Reasons To be Cheerful – has emerged.

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Tags: 1975, Feasts, Justin de Blank, Victor Gordon

//Harold Harris with 10ft tall display item designed by Rod Stokes, Mr Freedom, 1971. Photo courtesy Andrew Greaves.//

Something of a legend in 70s British boutique circles, here is Harold The Ted in all his glory accompanying one of the extravagant display items at Mr Freedom in Kensington Church Street: a 10 foot tall cut-out representation of a glowering boy scout made by Electric Colour Company’s Rod Stokes.

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Tags: David Hockney, Gene Krell, Geoff Edwards, Harold Harris, Harold The Ted, Jill St John, Johnny Moke, Jon Wealleans, Les Coleman, Let It Rock, Mediocre Murals, Rod Stokes, Simon Haynes, Stan Hesketh, Sue Thompson, Trevor myles

//Interior, 430 King's Road, Chelsea, May 1971. Note coconut matting, shack-style dressing room doors, trompe de l'oeil gate painted on stockroom door... and fake tiger. Photography: David Parkinson.//

I first wrote about Electric Colour Company – the design studio formed in the East End by four fine art students in the late 60s – in The Look and then in more detail here.

//Amid the singlets, printed sweatshirts and appliqued denim, a bamboo cage housed birds of paradise, suspended from the matting covered ceiling.//

In my view, ECC deserves much greater recognition for executing some very clever work in the field of retail design and interiors in the period 1969-1973.

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Tags: Andrew Greaves, Blueberry Hill, City Lights Studio, Electric Colour Company, Let It Rock, Paradise Garage, Seditionaries, SEX, Time Out, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Trevor myles, Worlds End

//Nick Abrahams (second left) with actor Aidan Gillen (left) and crew, fox and animal trainer shooting Ekki múkk in woods near Amersham, Bucks, last year. Photo: Eva Vermandel.//

Film-maker – and Bloke Of Britain – Nick Abrahams is the much-deserved subject of a retrospective at the ICA over the next two nights.

Tomorrow (January 24) there will be an evening of films and promos by Abrahams, who was recently nominated for the British Council best short for his magical Ekki múkk  (which has already won best short film at the London Short Film Festival 2013). Made for Sigur Rós, this starred a snail (voiced by folk singer Shirley Collins), a fox and The Wire’s Aidan Gillen.

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Tags: Aidan Gillen, Cybele's Reverie, Depeche Mode, Ekki múkk, Eva Vermandel, ICA, Jeremy Deller, Nick Abrahams, Shirley Collins, Sigur Rós, Stereolab, The Posters Came From The Walls, The Wire

Regulars on both sides of various Soho bars having been mourning the familiar figure the vast majority of us knew simply as Pam.

This portrait by photographer Carla Borel captures Pam’s charm, sweetness and light. And she’s in her element, outside The French.

Alastair Choat, landlord of The Coach & Horses, is hosting the wake for Pam after the funeral next Wednesday (January 30) from 3pm.

Read the obituary of Soho Pam here; at the time of writing this had been shared online more than 1,000 times within less than 24 hours of posting.

View Borel’s exemplary portfolio here.

Tags: Alastair Choat, Carla Borel, Coach & Horses, French House