“There is a moment when ‘good taste’ becomes dead; what has been considered ‘bad’ is suddenly found to be invigorating. Fashion today has little to do with la mode and the tacky is often accepted as an essential part of the necessary ‘total’ look. It can be fun.”

Cecil Beaton, introduction to the catalogue for the 1971 V&A exhibition Fashion: An Anthology

Recent visits to the V&A’s Archive of Art & Design have proved fruitful, particularly a viewing earlier this week of the collection of  Pop Art clothing sold through London boutique Mr Freedom in the late 60s and early 70s.

//Design: Diana Crawshaw, 1971//

//Kiss Off t-shirt, Jim O’Connor, 1971//

//Design Christopher Snow/Trevor Myles, body design: Diana Crawshaw, 1971//

//Design: Pamla Motown, 1971//

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Christopher Snow, Diana Crawshaw, Dinah Adams, Elton John, Fashion An Anthology, Felix Dennis, Jim O'Connor, Michael Regan, Oz, Pamla Motown, Royal College Of Art, Sir Cecil Beaton, The Fabric Of Pop, Trevor myles, V&A

//Olympia Le-Tan handbag based on artwork for The Damned's 1977 LP Music For Pleasure, with promotional t-shirt for Fred Burns' documentary Johnny Moped Basically using 1978 lightbulb design//

So potent is the creative legacy of the graphic design master Barney Bubbles – who died on this day 30 years ago – that he is continually cited as an inspiration by contemporary visual communicators, while his name and work is attached to all manner of endeavours.

Recently, Bubbles artworks were chosen by the French fashionista Olympia Le-Tan to lead her exclusive collection of handbags. Meantime Tokyo lifestyle label retaW has named a range of fragrance products “Barney*” in celebration of “the many album covers he was responsible for in the 70s and 80s”.

//Barney* products named after Bubbles by Japanese lifestyle company retaW//

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: (I Love The Sound Of) Breaking Glass, Basically Johnny Moped, Blockhead logo, Brian Griffin, Chalkie Davies, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Fred Burns, Ian Dury, Imperial Bedroom, Music For Pleasure, New Kids On The Block, Nick Lowe, Olympia-Le-Tan, retaW, Royal Photographic Society, Spasticus Autisticus, The Damned, The Photographers' Gallery

//All photos (c) Jonathan Ross//

Here are more previously unpublished images from London’s punk demi-monde.

Coincident to receiving Joe Stevens’ photograph of the pre-Pretenders Chrissie Hynde and photographer Kate Simon in Malcolm McLaren’s Sex Pistols Nude Boy shirts, collector/gallerist/Londoner Jonathan Ross supplied me with this fabulous selection of Polaroids taken at his west London house in the same period.

These include Hynde and Simon as well as their fellow Americans-about-town, the performers Judy Nylon and Patti Palladin and artist/tattooist Ruth Marten, writers Tamasin Day-Lewis and Jon Savage, Ross himself, his girlfriend Gina Louthan and Sir John Betjeman.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Chrissie Hynde, Gina Louthan, John Betjeman, Jon Savage, Jonathan Ross, Judy Nylon, Kate Simon, Patti Palladin, Ruth Marten, Tamasin Day-Lewis

//1975: Models Kathy + Jeremy in Artist tees at a New York fashion show.//

//2012: One of Motown's two new versions.//

Designer Pamla Motown – cherished for her contributions to 70s fashion with a run of sensational designs for Mr Freedom and under her own labels – is back with a new version of her graphic “Artist” T-shirt.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Duggie Fields, Jim O'Connor, Pamla Motown, Richard Gillette, Roy Lichtenstein

//Sex assistant Jordan, Gallery International, Vol 1, no 4.//

It’s unlikely that cities will shake or nations start to rock under the impact of Malcolm McLaren’s sexual revolution. A few people might die though.

Malcolm McLaren, at 30, is a mixture of entrepreneurial cultist, sexual evangelist, businessman, artist, fetishist and political philosopher; a psychotic visionary in the ephemeral subculture of the fashion world.

David May, Gallery International Vol 1 no 4.

In November 1975 – by which time his charges the Sex Pistols had just embarked on live performances – Malcolm McLaren was interviewed by journalist David May at 430 King’s Road, then in full bloom as radical retail venture SEX.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alan Jones, Bob Guccione, Cambridge Rapist, Chelsea Arts Club, David May, Forum, Gallery International, Hendon, Jeremy Thorpe, Jo Buckley, Jordan, Len Richmond, Let It Rock, Michael Collins, Michael Roberts, MIddlesex Polytechnic, Naked Cowboys, New English Library, Ravensbourne College, SEX, Sex Pistols, Simon Barker, The Economist, The Sunday Times, Time Out, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die

My engagement with the spectacle of the Royal Wedding is taking the form of protesting at Lambeth Council’s leasing of Clapham Common to Camp Royale.

British Remains, meanwhile, is publishing a design which offers a choice of expression.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: British Remains, Camp Royale, Clapham Common, Royal Wedding

In these 70s shots Dennis Hopper and Iggy Pop are both wearing the so-called “tits tee” – the design which started out as an art-school project in the late 60s, became a novelty item, then a punk classic and more recently was a Haiti disaster fundraiser.

I investigated the story of the tits tee here.

Tags: Alice Cooper, Dennis Hopper, Jizz Inc

Sixty years after Blast, the You’re Gonna Wake Up t-shirt adopted the same truculent tone and diffuse dialectic to ring the alarms amid a culture rendered flaccid by the failure of the 60s dream.

You’re Gonna Wake Up – which went on sale in SEX in the late autumn of 1974 – was conceived by Bernie Rhodes and realised with contributions from friends Malcolm McLaren (who wrote the slogan) and Gerry Goldstein.

Of course, it is best known for carrying the following band name: “Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS”.

I investigated its history in THE LOOK and also here. By publishing the list with links today I aim to dive deeper to demonstrate the tract’s range beyond popular culture.

Hence the references to artists David Holmes, Mel Ramos and Patrick Heron (and his campaign against The Tate), the literature of Alfred Bester, David Cooper, George Dangerfield, Konstantin Paustovsky and Bernard Wolfe, the work of  radical journalists Alexander Cockburn and Mervin Jones and the campaigning of political activists Pat Arrowsmith and Marian and Doloures Price.

Such content dates the compilation to October 1974: The Guardian published Heron’s 14,000-word Tate critique over consecutive days between the 12th and 14th of that month; the shirt itself mentions a piece by Jones in the New Statesman on October 4 and also an Elton John interview in the NME on September 25 (in fact the issue was dated September 28).

Alongside the call-girl phone number taken from local newsagents there are such quizzical references as that for former Playboy Club UK head Victor Lownes: “To be avoided first thing in the morning”.

Is this because one of the contributors had encountered him leaving his club Stocks, just a few hundred yards from SEX along the King’s Road?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alexander Cockburn, Alfred Bester, Bernard Wolfe, bernie Rhodes, David Cooper, Elton John, George Dangerfield, Gerry Goldstein, Konstantin Paustovsky, Kutie Jones & his SEX PISTOLS, Malcolm McLaren, Mel Ramos, Mervin Jones, Monty Modlyn, October 1974, pat Arrowsmith, Patrick heron, SEX