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The origins of the Tits tee: Robert Watts + Products for Implosions Inc

Feb 28th, 2013
Robert Watts, Implosions Inc, 1966.

//Robert Watts in front of Products by Implosions Inc. Photographer: unknown//

Malcolm McLaren’s adaptation of the infamous Tits t-shirt is one of punk’s most familiar designs, as applied by he and Vivienne Westwood to shirts sold in SEX and Seditionaries, worn by members of the Sex Pistols and replicated hundreds of thousands of times since.

Such is its distorting androgynous power that a version was chosen along with another McLaren/Westwood design – the Cowboys shirt – to represent the core aesthetic of the movement when the forthcoming Costume Institute exhibition Punk: Chaos To Couture was announced earlier this month.

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Magazines: West One’s London Belles 1973 – Diane Logan, Vivienne Westwood et al

Nov 23rd, 2011

A viewing of Jes Benstock’s fab doc A British Guide To Showing Off occasions this opportunity to dig out the London Belles feature from a 1973 issue of shortlived free magazine West One.

Above is milliner Diane Logan in one of her outfits as contestant Rita Ritz in the 1973 Alternative Miss World.

Logan – wife of sculptor Peter, mother of fashion illustrator Blue and sister-in-law of AMW host & hostess Andrew – is wearing a satin bathing suit with one of her own hats (from Logan’s Chiltern Street shop) and sandals from Tommy Roberts’ Covent Garden boutique City Lights Studio.

Another London Belle was Vivienne Westwood in an early media appearance wearing a Let It Rock striped suit, ankle boots, patterned stockings and an adapted Chuck Berry t-shirt from 430 King’s Road’s incarnation as Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die.

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