Paul Gorman is…

Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate: Jo Gannon’s quintessential snapshot of W11 in 1970

Aug 13th, 2015

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Taking its title from a song on hippie outfit Quintessence’s debut album, Jo Gannon’s documentary Getting It Straight In Notting Hill Gate – as featured on the BFI’s website – captures the social churn in the west London neighbourhood at the start of the 70s.

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Weld: Beguiling Brian Griffin considers fashion + feminism in Disegno

Aug 13th, 2015

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//Left: Top in blue suede, JW Anderson for Loewe. Right: White cotton shirt and blue flared trousers, both Kenzo//

Photographer Brian Griffin rarely fails to beguile, as evinced by these portraits from a series produced with stylist Emma Clifton for architectural/design/fashion magazine Disegno earlier this year.

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À la mod: My piece for The Guardian on the enduring appeal of Mod

Aug 13th, 2015

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From the SS16 menswear collections to the people flocking to Somerset House’s current celebration of The Jam, the aesthetic of “clean living under difficult circumstances” (as summarised by The Who’s first manager, Pete Meaden) is at one with what’s happening now in fashion…

Read the rest of my piece – with quotes from Dylan Jones of GQ/London Collections: Men, Soho tailor Mark Powell and Man About Town’s Ben Reardon – on the enduring appeal of Mod here.

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Groove Is In The Heart: Deee-lite at Wigstock 1990

Aug 12th, 2015

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This’ll put a spring in your step – Dee-lite performing at Wigstock in 1990, as posted by Hintmag. The second track is What Is Love (Holographic Goatee Mix).

Check it out on Hintmag’s FB page.

Here is the promo for Groove Is In The Heart:

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Anarchist, Situationist + Yippie texts + an army munitions handbook: Fashion graduate Imogen Hunt unearths the radical roots of Seditionaries’ incendiary Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco design

Aug 6th, 2015

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//Front and back of Vive le Rock/Punk Rock Disco and the radical political and military texts used as source material for the design//

There were T-shirts left over from the Wembley Rock & Roll revival festival in our cupboards in South Clapham; we had to do something with them. Sid Vicious liked them just the way they were and was often photographed in the original Vive Le Rock! design. But I needed to throw a few messages across them and reinvent them. So, I married the slogan and images of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis with words and drawings from various texts, using the title of The Anarchist Cookbook as well as the famous phrase of the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durutti.

Malcolm McLaren 2008

Imogen Hunt is a recent graduate from London College Of Fashion who tells me she was inspired by my work to write her thesis for the college’s history of fashion and culture course.

Part of Hunt’s dissertation – on the importance of the Situationist International and King Mob to the development of punk style – is dedicated to an examination of the influences and source material for the double-sided design Vive Le Rock/Punk Rock Disco, which was printed on the front and back of t-shirts and tops first sold in Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s King’s Road store Seditionaries in 1978.

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‘Gorman sidesteps the obvious’: Praise from Gwarizm for my contribution to PRINT @ SHOWStudio

Aug 6th, 2015

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It’s flattering to receive praise from a tastemaker of the standing of Gary Warnett, who has posted on his Gwarizm blog about my recent cult magazine chat with SHOWStudio editor Lou Stoppard for her Print project.

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Not-so-hidden persuader: Tate displaying The Identi-Kit Man by Derek Boshier

Aug 6th, 2015
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//The Identi-Kit Man, Derek Boshier, centre, Tate Britain. Photo: Chris Stephens.//

Chris Stephens, the Tate’s head of displays and head curator of modern British art, has organised for Derek Boshier’s 1962 painting to be hung at Tate Britain on London’s Millbank.

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My piece on David Bowie’s early 70s stylistic ch-ch-changes on The Guardian men’s fashion page

Aug 4th, 2015

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Read my piece on the stylistic changes rung by David Bowie during the early 70s on The Guardian’s men’s fashion pages here.

I discuss his fashion collaborations with Freddie Burretti, Daniella Parmar and Kansai Yamamoto and talk about the Pin-Ups suit from City Lights Studio designed by Derek Morton. Hope you enjoy.

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Lipstick: Read Perry Ogden on the style magazine he launched at Eton in 1979

Aug 3rd, 2015

 

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//Front cover, Lipstick, 1979//

The next instalment of SHOWStudio’s cult magazine series PRINT is an interview with photographer Perry Ogden about the extraordinary circumstances which led him to launch the style magazine Lipstick while he was an 18-year-old attendee at Eton College.

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