Paul Gorman

Royal College Of Art

Derek Boshier’s diary fit to burst: Imaginary Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, A Survey Of Work at Boston’s Gallery 360, films at Brooklyn’s Light Industry and inclusion in the Barbican’s huge Pop Art retrospective

//David Bowie As The Elephant Man by Derek Boshier, 1980 © Derek Boshier c/o Flowers Gallery//

Today the National Portrait Gallery unveiled Imaginary Portraits, a selection of works by artist Derek Boshier, who is the subject of a monograph I am editing.

Prominent are two studies of David Bowie; an oil-on-canvas painting executed in New York in 1980 while Bowie was rehearsing for his role in Bernard Pomerance’s play The Elephant Man at the city’s Booth Theatre and a 1981 ink-on-paper drawing which resulted from Boshier’s design for the sleeve for the album Lodger a couple of years earlier.

//Outer gatefold sleeve, Lodger, David Bowie, RCA, 1979. Design Derek Boshier, photography Brian Duffy//

Continue reading Derek Boshier’s diary fit to burst: Imaginary Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, A Survey Of Work at Boston’s Gallery 360, films at Brooklyn’s Light Industry and inclusion in the Barbican’s huge Pop Art retrospective

The Photo Kid: Ben Kelly at the Royal College Of Art, 1974

This is designer Ben Kelly at his 1974 degree show at London’s Royal College Of Art.

Kelly adopted the alter-ego The Photo Kid, who is portrayed in the work by which he is standing. The Photo Kid wore clothes – in particular brothel creepers – from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Let It Rock, as did Kelly; the shoes, pink socks and belt in this photograph all came from there, while the Hopalong Cassidy & Topper top (see Ian Harris’s comment below) was picked up at a Paris flea market.

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Dennis Hopper: A memory from the Royal College Of Art summer ball 1965

//Dennis Hopper in front of a Dr Pepper sign, 1965. Robert Walker Jr.//

A recent post triggered this memory from designer Diana Crawshaw of an encounter with Dennis Hopper. It occured at the Royal College Of Art summer ball in 1965, “when he was very young and so was I”:

At the ball everyone was wearing white or silver (it was that summer when The Knack came out).

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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.

Continue reading Bowie Boys by Tommy Roberts