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.
Continue reading The legendary Harold The Ted + one of Mr Freedom’s ‘monstrous oddities’
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.
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.
Harpers & Queen ran this photograph of the short-lived but significant World’s End boutique Paradise Garage in the Shopping Bazaar section of the September 1971 issue.
Continue reading “I’m very earthy”: Trevor Myles and his Paradise Garage in Harpers & Queen 1971
The September 2012 issue of GQ features this David Parkinson photograph of the interior of Tommy Roberts and Trevor Myles’ Mr Freedom at 430 King’s Road.
One of a number of previously-unpublished photographs in Mr Freedom – Tommy Roberts: British Design Hero, this shot captures the extraordinary fit-out Myles and Roberts’ commissioned from pioneering East End design team Electric Colour Company.
Read my post about ECC’s achievements – with interviews and many illustrations, still the only piece to be published anywhere about this important but sorely neglected group of British artist/designers – here.
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.
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.
Continue reading Memories of Dandie Fashions + Paradise Garage + a return to Granny’s
Billy Murphy’s boutique The Emperor Of Wyoming was an extremely important staging post not just in the story of British rock and roll fashion but also the development of the vintage scene in this country.
Opened by Murphy at 404 King’s Road in 1972, TEOW specialised in selected items of Westernwear and American clothing at a time when the pickings were slim for such garments in London.
The recent FT piece about the value of Disney to high-end brands (Fashion Takes The Mickey) caught up with those which have engineered hook-ups with the House Of The Mouse in recent years: Dolce & Gabanna, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Iceberg, Neil Barrett, Manish Arora, Hayden-Harnett, Capellini, Cory Grosser, Chopard, Tommy Hilfiger…
A Disney apparatchik is quoted: “We would never work with a designer that was too edgy or irreverent.”
Once upon a time they weren’t so purse-lipped.
This feature on five owners of interesting automobiles comes from a time long before the banalities of Top Gear.
These are exterior shots of the incarnations of 430 King’s Road since the early 60s.