//Jim French. Photo: SHOWStudio//

The American illustrator and photographer Jim French – best known for his pioneering endeavours in the field of homoerotic art – has died at home in Palm Springs at the age of 84.

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Tags: Andy Warhol, Bruce Weber, Colt Studios, Cowboys t-shirt, Hand In Glove, Herb Ritts, Jim French, Longhorns - Dance, Luger, Manpower, Margaret Walters, Morrissey, Philadelphia Museum School, Rip Colt, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sex Pistols, Tammis Keefe, The Male Nude, The Smiths, Tom Of Finland, Vivienne Westwood

//Johnny Cash by Jim French//

Prior to Jim French launching his homoerotic imprint Colt Studios, the venerable American illustrator and photographer made his bones on Madison Avenue in the 1950s and 60s producing work for such clients as Columbia Records and scarf and handkerchief designer Tammis Keefe.

Now a selection of French’s artworks from this period are going on display in an exhibition at Palm Springs gallery Nat Reed.

//Frank Sinatra for Columbia Record Club, Jim French//

//Textile design for Tammis Keefe, Jim French//

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Tags: Barbra Streisand, Colt Studios, Columbia Records, Frank Sinatra, Jim French, Johnny Cash, Johnny Mathis, Longhorns - Dance, Madison Avenue, Nat Reed Gallery, Palm Springs, Tammis Keefe

//Drift: New t-shirt from Japanese streetwear company Peel + Lift//

My 2011 post unraveling the threads running through the notorious Naked Cowboys punk t-shirt has itself inspired a new shirt.

The Cowboys t-shirt was designed by Malcolm McLaren in 1975 for sale in SEX, the shop he ran with Vivienne Westwood at 430 King’s Road in London’s World’s End.

Popular with punks and worn by members of the Sex Pistols and their coterie, it was initially known as the Saturday Night Dance shirt because of the presence of the dancehall sign in the appropriated homoerotic cowboy illustration by Jim French.

//Cowboys t-shirt sold at auction in London last year//

The new t-shirt has been produced by Japanese streetwear company Peel + Lift, which reproduces many McLaren and Westwood designs. It is entitled Drift, making overt the presence of 60s radical thinking in McLaren’s artwork: the drift, or the dérive, was a major theme of the Situationist International, which believed individuals should allow themselves to wander urban landscapes and become either repelled or enchanted by what they found (in the manner of the archetypal French urban explorer the flâneur).

//Panel, p3, Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti, 1966//

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Tags: All The King's Horses, André Bertrand, Bobby Busnach, Derek Harris, Gerry Visco, Guy Debord, Jim French, King Mob Echo, Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti, Longhorns - Dance, Michelle Bernstein, Naked Cowboys, Peel + Lift, SEX, Sex Pistols, Strasbourg University, Tom Vague, Vivienne Westwood