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Cruelty free fashion in blue camo heaven: Good Guys x Le Tricycle

May 5th, 2016

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I’m particularly taken with these blue camo numbers, which are the result of a fresh collaboration between cruelty free fashion shoe brand Good Guys Don’t Wear Leather and Paris’s vegetarian food bike Le Tricycle.

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Rare footage to be revealed at Malcolm McLaren Night in Southampton tomorrow

Nov 1st, 2015
mmvirginad

//”I have always considered myself a gentleman…” McLaren in magician mode in a 2001 TV advert for Virgin Upper Class//

Tomorrow (November 2) I am introducing a Malcolm McLaren film night at Southampton’s The Stage Door as part of the city’s Film Week.

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Introducing first UK screening of Malcolm McLaren’s completed Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century at The Performance Studio next week

May 30th, 2015

Malcolm McLaren

McLaren opened up the frontiers between artistic and wider cultural attitudes by taking fashion and music out of their respective contexts and translating them into new formats that captured the wider popular zeitgeist. A closer look at his seemingly disarticulated, exuberant and streetwise oeuvre shows it to be consistent and, in its own way, profound.

David Thorp

On Wednesday (June 3) I’m introducing a screening of Malcolm McLaren’s Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century at The Performance Studio in Peckham, south London.

This is a the first-ever opportunity in this country to see the final work, which McLaren completed a matter of weeks before his death in April 2010. A working version was shown here just once, at Newcastle’s Baltic in November 2009.

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Sunny Suits – recent work: Joujouka, Pigalle + portraiture

May 6th, 2014
SERO, SEX SHOP SIGN, PARIS 2014

//SERO, Pigalle, Paris, 2014. Sunny Suits//

I’m intrigued by the photography of Sunny Suits, the American who, like so many illustrious others, flourishes in Paris, so am delighted to present this selection of recent work complete with her descriptions and background text.

Joujouka

VILLAGE BOYS DRESSED AS AISHA KANDISHA, JOUJOUKA 2013

//Village boys dressed as Aisha Kandisha, Joujouka, 2013. Sunny Suits//

MASTER MUSICIANS PIPERS PLAYING UNDER THE TENT, JOUJOUKA 2013

//Master Musician pipers playing under the tent, Joujouka, 2013. Sunny Suits//

MASTER MUSICIANS IN THE MADRAS BEFORE PLAYING, JOUJOUKA 2013

//Master Musicians in the Madras before playing, Joujouka, 2013. Sunny Suits//

MOHAMED HAMRI'S GRAVE, JOUJOUKA 2013

//Mohamed Hamri’s grave, Joujouka, 2013. Sunny Suits//

CAFE BOUJELOUD, JOUJOUKA 2013

//Cafe Boujeloud, Joujouka, 2013. Sunny Suits//

The Joujouka festival happens once a year in Morocco, a few hours from Tangier. It’s an incredible experience, to live on the farm with the villagers, to share their lives for a few days. Each night around midnight the musicians play and are excellent!

The folklore of the village is something special and I feel really lucky to have experienced it. Brian Jones and the Beats are to be thanked for sharing the discovery with us I’d say but it’s the music and also the painter Mohamed Hamri that I connect with most.

Champagne Bars and Sex Shops

SERO, SEX SHOP SIGN, PARIS 2014

//SERO, sex shop sign, Paris 2014. Sunny Suits//

My first memories of Paris include Pigalle. I used to live in the area and I have wanted to document the champagne bars and the women who work in them for years but before, my French wasn’t good enough and now the bars have almost disappeared. It’s also not exactly my world so I don’t think I have the right to intrude even though it’s only with respect that I see them.

Some of them have become sheesha bars, which I don’t mind because it’s part of the quartier, but red light districts are dying worlds. I see it as them as endangered species, something exotic and necessary. It’s a shame to see them disappear. There should be a smut preservation society.

The photograph ‘Sero’ is of the largest sex shop in Pigalle called Sexodrome. The lights had burned out leaving the sign to read Sero. Ironic for a sex shop sign.

Vince Aletti

VINCE ALETTI AT HOME #2, NYC 2013

VINCE ALETTI AT HOME, NYC 2013

Vince is a journalist and photo critic who was close to Peter Hujar. He knew David Wojnarowicz and many, if not all of the great artists from the Lower East Side that I admire so much. His voice is one of experience as that was his peer group. My friend the artist Paul P and Vince are friends and Paul took me to meet him one day at his place, which is like a shrine! He’s smart and generous and it was a lovely afternoon.

Ariel Kenig
ARIEL KENIG AT HOME, PARIS 2014
My friend Ariel is a writer here in France, novels and plays. He’s young and accomplished. He’s singing now and I think he’ll be just as successful. His groupies are already in line. He’s got something no doubt. His style is sort of what I call ‘Nu-Française’. He respects the lineage, of literature and now singing, and is a contemporary of it.

Lamine Badian Kouyaté

LAMINE BADIAN KOUYATE (XULY BET), LE COMPTOIR GENERAL, PARIS 2014

//Lamine Badian Kouyaté (Xuly Bët), Le Comptoir General, Paris, 2014. Sunny Suits//

Lamine is the designer of the French brand Xuly Bët. He’s half Malian half Senegalese and for me totally Parisien. Xuly Bët has its well earned place in fashion history. I don’t think of fashion without thinking of Xuly Bët. His proposition is a mix of street, couture and Africa and I love it. It’s the 25th anniversary of Xuly Bët this year and I’m really honoured to have been able to take his picture. You can see a great Xuly Bët show in the Robert Altman film Prêt-à-Porter.

Read more about the Master Musicians Of Joujouka here and the story of Aïsha Kandisha here.

For French-speakers there is an interview with Ariel Kenig about his book Le Miracle here.

DJHistory has a great interview with Vince Aletti here.

Here is the Xuly Bët site.

Visit Sunny Suits’ site here.

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Alchemy: Malcolm McLaren on Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century

Jun 9th, 2013

Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century is a personal and subjective journey that began firstly by ambling through a century’s archive of thousands of cinema commercials about the city (its inhabitants, what it sells, how it looks…), secondly by gathering impressions (choosing what to exploit, covet and keep), jotting them down only when I returned to my studio. Then, using these specific scenes as a palette and my voice as a brush, twenty-one portraits emerged of a Paris I had never witnessed before.

Malcolm McLaren November 2009

Tomorrow (June 10), Art Basel will host a screening of Malcolm McLaren’s final artwork, Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century.

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Cover story of current issue of Étapes

Jul 19th, 2012

The cover story of the new issue of France’s graphics magazine Étapes is based around writer Renaud Faroux’s 10-page feature about my Barney Bubbles book and recent exhibition The Past, The Present & The Possible.

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Dream capital: Mrs G on M Goldstein at Dover Street Market

Jul 6th, 2012

Scale & Distortion: M Goldstein's installation at Dover Street Market

Hackney Road’s M Goldstein is one of London’s most intriguing and exciting retail ventures, a constantly evolving arrangement of antiques and curios, clothing and objets d’art.

Scale & Distortion: M Goldstein's installation at Dover Street Market

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Encounter with an enigma: Vice Q+A with Pierre Cardin

Feb 20th, 2012

With Cardin, Paris, January 2012. Photography: Matthew Frost.

Last month I spent a fascinating couple of hours in the company of one of the grand enigmas of the age, Pierre Cardin.

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