The new interiors magazine TON – the first issue is out now –  has two pieces by me on very different but equally extraordinary homes.

TON’s founder and editor-in-chief Jermaine Gallacher – who works with art director Rory Gleeson and editorial director Ted Stansfield – commissioned me to write about Dave Baby’s apartment close to where we both live, in south London’s Stockwell.

As I write, ‘this otherworldly space represents a bewitching realm of desires, sexuality and esoterica with Dave at the maelstrom’s centre, a still figure dispensing wily wit and charm’.

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Tags: Celeste, Christopher Nemeth, Clare de Rouen, Dave Baby, Derek Jarman, House Of Beauty & Culture, Ischia, Jermaine Gallacher, John Maybury, Judy Blame, Luchino Visconti, Mark Lebon, Reference Point, Rory Gleeson, Roxy Lee, Ted Stansfield

//Details of Judy Blame jewellery with Helen Bullock bag//

//Bullock’s window for The Conformist at Belmacz, 45 Davies Street, London W1//

//Curator Paul Kindersely with wall of David Parkinson photographs 1970-75//

“So great to see an eclectic range of images and objects that challenge norms and play with moral codes”
The Courtauld’s Documenting Fashion blog

The Conformist – artist Paul Kindersley’s celebration of great British non-conformity of expression – is now entering its final few days.

If you have the opportunity, I recommend a visit to this fascinating exhibition (at Mayfair’s art/jewellery space Belmacz) which joins the dots between Emma, Lady Hamilton and Punk Rock, via Judy Blame, Leigh Bowery, Helen Bullock, Jennifer Campbell, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Paul Housley, Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood, Julie Verhoeven, Rose Wylie and many other glittering and creative creatures.

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Tags: Belmacz, Hellen Bullock, Jean Condé, Jennifer Campbell, Judy Blame, Julie Verhoeven, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Paul Housley, Paul Kindersley, Rose Wylie, Stephen Jones

//Leporello for The Conformist featuring (far left), David Parkinson’s unusual entry in his 1970 photography degree show at London’s Regent Street Poly//

//Paul Kindersley at last night’s exhibition opening//

The Conformist – artist Paul Kindersley’s counter intuitively-titled group show about non-conformity of expression from Emma, Lady Hamilton and Aubrey Beardsley to Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Julie Verhoeven – opened with a bang last night with a private view at Mayfair’s art and jewellery space Belmacz.

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Tags: Aubrey Beardsley, Belmacz, Club International, Emma Lady Hamilton, Eve Ferret, I Groaned With Pain, Jah Wobble, James Cahill, John Frankland, Judy Blame, Julia Muggenburg, Julie Verhoeven, Leigh Bowery, Let It Rock, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Rose Wylie, Stephen Jones, Valerie Allam, Vivienne Westwood

//The simulation of the Seditionaries facade in industrial materials provided the entry and exit point for models on the runway today//

//With rings representing the positions where designer Ben Kelly exposed air conditioning vents to view, Kim Jones replaced the diagonal bar which occupied the central square over the door with the trademark Vuitton ‘V’//

//Ben Kelly’s portfolio shot of the facade he designed and installed at 430 King’s Road in December 1976//

Amid the references to the late Christopher Nemeth in today’s Paris show of the Louis Vuitton A/W 15 menswear collection (see my last post), artistic director Kim Jones used the staging to pay subtle homage to the two great maverick figures of London street culture – namely Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and specifically their 70s punk store Seditionaries.

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Tags: Ben Kelly, Catherine McDermott, Christopher Nemeth, Covent Garden, Judy Blame, Kim Jones, London University Of The Arts, Long Acre, Louis Vuitton, Mark Lebon, Nellee Hooper, Paul Howie, Vivienne Westwood

//Heroes by Mark Lebon for i-D Bible 1988. Styling by Judy Blame and Christopher Nemeth//

I’m looking forward to participating in ShowStudio’s live broadcast discussion of today’s Louis Vuitton A/W 15 menswear show in Paris.

Vuitton artistic director Kim Jones has been trailing the show on his Instagram feed with tantalising hints as to the direction and content. Jones’ A/W 15 collaborators include Judy Blame, Nellee Hooper and Mark Lebon – all names associated with the late shoemaker John Moore’s magical 80s north-east London art/fashion space The House Of Beauty & Culture.

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Tags: Christopher Nemeth, Commes des Garcons, John Flett, John Moore, Judy Blame, Kasia Maciejowska, Kim Jones, Louis Vuitton, Mark Lebon, Nellee Hooper, Richard Torry, The House Of Beauty & Culture, The Selby, Tokyo

//One wall of the ShowStudio Punk exhibition//

In the period 1972-78 when the body of the partnership’s punk fashions were created, Malcolm McLaren’s art education and development as a largely conceptual visual artist was applied with Vivienne Westwood’s intuitive and sophisticated technical skills.

The resultant potency of the work was achieved by such factors as: balance in the proportions; deft use of juxtaposition; confidence in realisation; jarring harmony in the use of colour; wit in the application of motifs; and astute sense of framing, particularly of text and visual imagery.

Excerpt from introduction to my review of the McLaren/Westwood designs in the Costume Institute collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, summer 2013.

Precision, deftness, balance, harmony, these are terms unjustly omitted from the standard  critical lexicon applied to punk’s central design aesthetics as conceived and realised by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and their coterie.

Which is why Punk @ ShowStudio, the elegant exhibition which is now moving into its final week at photographer Nick Knight’s Belgravia gallery, is to be applauded, since it avoids the run-of-the-mill in favour of recognition of the importance of these qualities.

“I was very impressed. It was inspiring to see what I like to call ‘the origins of Punk’ as opposed to the usual well documented ‘greatest hits of Punk’,” the collector/archivist/author Paul Burgess wrote to me recently.

//Part of Judy Blame's contribution to the exhibition//

Read more about Punk @ ShowStudio here.

The exhibition is open every day 11am-6pm until Friday at 19 Motcomb Street, London SW1X 8LB.

Tags: Costume Institute, Judy Blame, Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Nick Knight, Seditionaries, SEX, Showstudio, Vivienne Westwood