// In George Cox creepers: Malcolm McLaren, 430 King’s Road, January 1972. Photo: David Parkinson / Slowthai, Northampton, 2018. Photo: Ewen Spencer for Arena Homme + //

“Those blue suede shoes had a magical association that seemed authentic. They represented an age of desperate romantic revolt to change your life.”

Malcolm McLaren, notes on his life in fashion, 1997

I’m celebrating the 70th anniversary of the introduction of George Cox & Co’s first creeper at the Port Eliot Festival next week with Adam Waterfield, the fourth generation owner of the great independent British brand, and his son Alistair, a Central Saint Martins student and model who is very much involved in the family business.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Adam Waterfield, Alistair Waterfield, Andrew Greaves, Arena Homme +, Central Saint Martins, Comme des Garçons, David Parkinson, Ellie Grace Cumming, Ewen Spencer, Fred Perry, George Cox, Glastonbury Festival, Harold The Ted, Jonathan Baron, Le Kilt, Lewis Leathers, Northampton, Olly Alexander, Port Eliot Festival, Sam Rock, Slowthai, Years And Years

I’m delighted to announce that my map The Look Of London – which teases out the intertwining of popular music and street style in our capital over five decades – has been reissued by groovy guide makers Herb Lester Associates.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: American Classics, Kornbluth, Lewis Leathers, Paul Smith, Soul II Soul, The 'Duffer' Of St George, The baron Of Brixton

//Front and back cover designs//

//Pages on McLaren including image of the 1977 God Save The Queen muslin top designed with Vivienne Westwood and featuring Jamie Reid’s graphic and lyrics for the Sex Pistols track//

//Vermorel’s memoir includes images of McLaren’s student work such as this mixed media piece produced while on a fine art course at Goldsmith’s College in 1969//

Considered as an artwork, a two-and-a-half year project, and in its own terms, McLaren’s Sex Pistols’ was as seminal and resonant as Picasso’s Guernica.

Only this was a masterpiece made not of paint and canvas but of headlines and scandal, scams and factoids, rumour and fashion, slogans, fantasies and images and (I almost forgot) songs, all in a headlong scramble to auto-destruction.

For it was equally a Situationist treatise-by-example, the unremitting and obdurate core being McLaren’s grasp of the theory of situations as proposed by the SI.

Indeed, the story of the Pistols is a Situationist textbook of how to create situations from which there is no return. You refuse to negotiate, to compromise, to be co-opted, you exacerbate every crisis and recklessly play loser wins and then you blow up all the bridges so then there is no way back.

We are then forced to invent another future. Or maybe simply relish the mess, “the ecstasy of making things worse”.
From Fred Vermorel’s memoir which appears exclusively in the new exhibition catalogue.

The catalogue for the exhibition Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges is now available.

The lavishly illustrated 100-page book includes a foreword by John Hansard Gallery’s Ros Carter and Stephen Foster, my introduction, an essay by co-curator David Thorp and a specially commissioned memoir of Malcolm McLaren and his connections to post-war radicals by his art-school friend and collaborator Fred Vermorel.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Adrian hunt, Alexander Trocchi, Cornerhouse Books, David Thorp, Fred Vermorel, Guernica, Guy Debord, John Hansard Gallery, King Mob, Lewis Leathers, Peel + Lift, Picasso, Ros Carter, Sex Pistols, Situationist International, Situationist International: John McCready Archive, Stephen Foster

A few months before Cosey Fanni Tutti upset the apple-cart as a member with Genesis Breyer P. Orridge of COUM Transmissions – the “wreckers of civilisation” who staged the Prostitution exhibition at London’s ICA – the performance artist/musician posed with another model for a 1976 issue of men’s magazine Club International.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Club International, Cosey Fanni Tutti, COUM Transmissions, Fiesta, Genesis Breyer P. Orridge, Jay Mirdahl, Lewis Leathers, Park Lane, Playbirds, Throbbing Gristle

//Front cover, Rock Archive, Various Artists, Windmill Records, 1972//

It is relatively common knowledge among those interested in the careers of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and their series of extraordinary shops that they supplied clothes to the 1973 album Golden Hour Of Rock & Roll; Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road was clearly credited on the back of the record sleeve.

//Front cover, The Golden Hour Of Rock N Roll, Various Artists, Pye/Golden Hour, 1973//

//The photograph on the Rock Archive cover was flipped to better accommodate the text. Here it is as originally shot//

But I have fresh information which helps towards a greater understanding of McLaren’s project to investigate the detritus of popular culture’s recent past. During a bout of research recently I came across this earlier and hitherto undocumented use of Let It Rock clothing in a music context: the front cover of Rock Archive, a budget LP compilation released by the specialist British independent label Windmill in 1972.

And I am detailing the clothes on the cover with images taken inside Let It Rock which have never been previously published.

//Starke shirts with 50s sports jacket on Let It Rock wall, January 1972. Photograph: David Parkinson//

//Starke label detail//

Each garment worn by the model – whose attempts at rocking out resulted in his giving every appearance of suffering considerable pain – comes from the deadstock of British brands assiduously assembled by Malcolm McLaren and his art-school friend Patrick Casey for the opening of the world’s first avowedly post-modern retail outlet in November 1971.

From the ground up, the Rock Archive cover star wore black suede Denson’s Fine Poynts, ice-blue Lybro jeans with 5in cuffs, a Frederick Starke flyaway collar shirt and a studded and decorated Lewis Leathers early 60s Lightning jacket (which featured a highly collectable 6-5 Special patch).

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Bruton Street, Cathy Gale, Densons, Fine Pynts, Frederick Starke, Fumble, Golden Hour Of Rock & Roll, Good Golly Miss Molly, Hipgnosis, Honor Blackman, Let It Rock, Lewis Leathers, Lightning jacket, Little Richard, Lloyd Johnson, Lord Saatchi, Lybro, Paradise Garage, Patrick Casey, Rock Archive, Screaming Lord Sutch, Sunday Times, Teddy Boys, The Avengers, the Beatles, Vivienne Westwood, Windmill Records, Zapata

//Front cover, Club International, 1974. Paul Raymond Publications. Photo: David Parkinson//

Ahead of the publication of my piece about the late photographer David Parkinson in GQ UK in a few weeks, here are a couple of masterful images which demonstrate his stylised,  simultaneously gritty and glamorous approach.

//Front cover, Man Only, 1974//

Both stem from issues of men’s magazine Club International; the 1974 cover shot model is wearing Parkinson’s decorated Lewis Leathers jacket which he used to dress other fashion photo-sessions. The image was also used on the cover of Italian soft-porn title Man Only.

//Acme Attractions photoshoot for Club International 1975 including (left) Martin Brading and Don Letts and far right Steph Raynor. Photo: David Parkinson//

The spread above focused on the suits and menswear available at Acme Attractions, the Kings Road vintage/retro outlet co-owned by Parkinson’s Lesicester friend Steph Raynor, who appears in the photograph with Acme’s manager, filmmaker/DJ/BAD member Don Letts, and Parkinson’s assistant, photographer Martin Brading.

Raynor is among those who contributed to my feature on Parkinson, who is granted the accolade of ‘GQ Icon’ in the June issue (available at the beginning of May).

Tags: Acme Attractions, Club International, Don Letts, GQ, Lewis Leathers, Man Only, Martin Brading, Steph Raynor

//From The Look blog 2009//

A few years back I wrote a series of blogs about the so-called “Wild Thing” jacket worn by Iggy Pop on the cover of his and The Stooges’ album Raw Power; in 2008 I had brokered a deal for the jacket designers John and Molly Dove to reissue a t-shirt range – including a version bearing the Wild Thing’s panther head – via Topman.

Around that time I also hooked them up with the current owner of the jacket, US maverick pop culture entrepreneur and collector  “Long Gone” John Mermis (who I’d met as far back as the mid-90s at his extraordinary Long Beach mansion).

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Derek Harris, Frederic Raphael, Iggy & The Stooges, Iggy Pop, JOhn Dove, Jon Savage, Kensington Market, Kings Cross Cinema, Let It Rock, Lewis Leathers, Long Gone John, Mick Rock, Nova, Paradise Garage, Patrick Casey, Vivienne Westwood, Wild Thing

//Jeff Dexter (back to camera) with fashion historian Laura Helms + Nigel Waymouth.//

The Lewis Leathers shop in Whitfield Street W1 was the venue of the launch of The Look Of London map collaboration with Herb Lester Associates.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alex Taylor, Ali Rose, Ben Olins, Bruce Marcus, Caz Facey, Cube PR, Dawbell PR, Derek Harris, Ed Rekkers, Eve Ferret, Gieves & Hawkes, Herb lester Associates, Jah Wobble, Jane Smillie, Jeff Dexter, John Frankland, John Gall, Jordan Baseman, JP Gaul, Jules Middlebrook, Kitty Regan, Laura Helms, Lewis Leathers, Mark Wagstaff, Mrs G, Nick Abrahams, Nick ferman, Nicoal Murray, Nigel Waymouth, Patrick Watson, Rachel Caunt, Saint Craft, Sarah Watson, Suze Malyon, Teri Grenert, Tom Sheehan, Will Hodgkinson