British Remains: “They couldn’t find anything decent anyone else was doing THEY DID IT THEMSELVES!”
//Teenagers from London’s Kentish Town and Tufnell Park: “We hate everything.”//
//London Brick//
//Vacant//
//Generation X front//
//Generation X back//
//Vacant bag//
British Remains:
Tel 01 230 1212
Contacts: info@britishremains.co.uk/sales@britishremains.co.uk
THE LOOK can reveal that the late Malcolm McLaren was to be a witness for the prosecution in the trail which has resulted in suspended jail sentences for conmen Grant Champkins Howard of Croydon, south London and Lee Parker, of Eastbourne, Sussex.
At Kingston Crown Court yesterday (July 1), the pair were each handed 12-month suspended sentences for selling fake Banksy prints on eBay.
“Neither of you should be under any illusion that I regard both of you as nothing more than a pair of old-fashioned conmen,” said Judge Suzan Matthews, who ordered the pair to complete 240 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months and imposed restraining orders preventing them from selling on the internet.
Parker, 45, and Champkins-Howard, 44, pleaded guilty to selling copies of genuine numbered prints on eBay, earning £57,000 over a three-year period.
Prosecutor Richard Mandel said they passed off the copies as being from official limited-edition numbered print runs made early on in the artist’s career, forging ownership documents and adding official numbers and stamps to some, which were sold for up to £2,000.
The Metropolitan Police recovered 120 prints during the investigation which, if sold as genuine, could have fetched £200,000-plus.
Champkins Howard and Parker denied conspiracy charges of copying and embellishing clothing by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and possessing articles for use in fraud.
It was this aspect of the case for which McLaren supplied testimony on behalf of the prosecution. His death in April – and Westwood’s unwillingness to comment – are understood to have been factors in the decision for those charges to be ordered to lie on file.
Charges are left to lie on file when the prosecution doesn’t feel it needs to secure a conviction because of other guilty pleas being offered by defendants.
Art forgers Grant Champkins-Howard, 44, and Lee Parker, 45, face jail sentences after confessing to selling fake prints by guerilla artist Banksy on eBay at Kingston Crown Court last Friday (June 4).
Charges in the separate case against the pair alleging the manufacture and distribution of fake 70s designs by the late Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood lie on file.
THE LOOK will not be publishing comments on this post.
Here is a exclusive selection of images from a vintage 80s fashion collection going up for private sale this week.
The vendor is selling a prime collection of streetwear, including key pieces from the Chelsea boutique BOY.
As detailed in Chapter 21 of THE LOOK, BOY was opened at 151 King’s Road in the spring of 1977 by John Krevine and Steph Raynor in the wake of McLaren and Westwood’s Seditionaries (unveiled at 430 King’s Road in December 1976).
These days original BOY clothing in good condition is much sought-after. The pieces in this collection date from 1982 onward.
The so-called black cotton “bondage dress” is a multi-layered wonder complete with straps, apron, metallic poppers, an attached belt, plastic buckles and adjustable three quarter-length sleeves.
Dating from 1983 is a roll-collared cream and orange batwing sleeved top with Japanese script.
A black and gold chemise dates from 1985, when BOY’s designs chimed with the developing clubwear aesthetic.
This is when BOY was championed by Boy George, who appeared in many BOY designs, posed for the boutique’s catalogue and even created a couple of t-shirts.
A red-on-black crew-necked sweater is also from this period. The vendor also has printed BOY stockings, leggings, and other items. as well as garments from labels such as Fiorucci and WilliWear.
Inquiries to the vendor may be made via THE LOOK.
THE LOOK can exclusively reveal that the vendor of the swastika t-shirt worn by Sid Vicious in The Great Rock & Roll Swindle is also selling two more of the Sex Pistols bass-player’s possessions: another t-shirt designed by the late Malcolm McLaren as well as Vicious’ own copy of Ian Dury’s album New Boots & Panties!!.
//Image courtesy of helen-hall.com//
The swastika tee is priced at £10,000 in the sale, which is being conducted privately by independent rock and film memorabilia specialist Helen Hall.
//Image courtesy of helen-hall.com//
The other top – which has one of the variations of the design Smoking Boys, produced by McLaren in autumn 1975 – is £2,000, while the Ian Dury record, which has Sid Vicious’ signature taped to it, is £2,500.
//Image courtesy of helen-hall.com//
Both were housed as part of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame exhibition in Cleveland. The swastika tee was offered, but not accepted because of its inflammatory nature.
Hall says the items were given to the vendor by Vicious’ mother Anne Beverley, after his death on February 2 1979.
The Dury album (the sleeve of which was designed by the great Barney Bubbles) was a gift to Vicious from a fan named Patsy during his spell in New York’s Bellevue Hospital in October 1978.
//Pages 8-9, Anarchy In The UK No 1, 1976//
The Smoking Boys is of particular interest since there are no photographs nor documentary evidence of Vicious wearing it; in 1978/9 during his time in London and New York he favoured more recent designs from 430 King’s Road in it’s Seditionaries incarnation, including Expose and Fuck Yr Mother & Run Away Punk!, McLaren’s provocative and overtly sexual adaptations of novelty shirts bought at LA sex shop The Pleasure Chest and on New York’s gay strip Christopher Street.
Vicious did wear a version of SEX’s Smoking Boys in 1976, as shown in the Ray Stevenson photographs in the first and only issue of the band’s fanzine Anarchy In The UK (a copy of which I bought on my 17th birthday in December 1976 in a news agent’s in Goodge Street, central London).
//Detail, page 9, Anarchy In The UK No 1, 1976. Photo: Ray Stevenson//
The image, which was replicated in a number of different ways, came from an English underground magazine McLaren bought in south London.
“This was my first attempt at making a Sex Pistols T-shirt; I was acting on behalf of the group and wanted to create something of a stir,” McLaren told me last year.
“In the back streets of Brixton, I found photos of nude young boys, smoking. I chose one and he became my sexy young assassin: a ’sex pistol’. All I needed was to draw a guitar.”
McLaren attempted to persuade associate Bernie Rhodes to print the t-shirts. “This was too much for him,” he said. “Bernie used to perspire at the kitchen table, as if somebody was about to break down the door, arrest him and charge him with being a paedophile, and so he would go to prison. That would all be my fault. I ended up simply making a single nude boy on pink jersey shirts for myself.”
For the versions with multiple images, McLaren coerced the Sex Pistols founding member, bass-player Glen Matlock to utilise the screen-printer at his college, Saint Martin’s School Of Art.
How Vicious had one two years later on the other side of the Atlantic is not explained.
“It was with Sid’s belongings when he died so we have to assume he likely wore it at some point,” says Hall, who was a specialist in rock and film memorabilia with Christie’s London and New York from 1998-2008.
Interested parties should direct their inquiries to Hall at helen@helen-hall.com
For our money, Demob doesn’t receive enough acknowledgment for its considerable and enduring contribution to British style.
//Exterior, 47 Beak Street, Soho, London, 1983. Photo: Rex Features//
We’re proud there is a shout to this combination boutique, fashion label and design/music collective in Chapter 26 of THE LOOK.
//Full-page ad, The Face 24, April 1982//
Following the discovery in an old trunk of some fab pieces bought there – blimey! – at least a quarter of a century ago, it seems apposite to celebrate the creative hub founded by Chris Brick in 1981.
Collecting a group of like-minded fashion players (including fellow son of Merthyr Chris Sullivan), Brick assumed occupancy of the former fishmonger’s at 46 Beak Street in London’s Soho, retaining the wonderful tiled interior and many of the fixtures.
//Sade fits one of her designs for the 1981 NY Demob show. Photo: Shapersofthe80s.com//
In May 1981 Demob had been part of the British “Blitz invasion” of New York along with Sullivan, Jon Baker of Axiom, journalist Robert Elms, photographer Graham Smith, the members of Spandau Ballet and others, including then-Demob designers Sade Adu and Sarah Lubell.
//Debut 5: Pages 46-47. Thanks to Dalston Oxfam Shop//
You can read all about that over at David Johnson’s excellent and thorough site Shapers Of the 80s.
//Debut 5: Pages 48-49. Thanks to Dalston Oxfam Shop//
Back in the UK Demob clothes were regularly featured in fashion and style mags, with the spreads above modelled by Susie Bick in the short-lived 12sq in Debut, which included a free vinyl compilation.
//”Prison shirt”, 1984//
Also selling through such venues as Chelsea’s Great Gear Market, and later “Disco Dave”’s King’s Road shop Review, Demob pulled off the feat of transforming the 40s aesthetic suggested by the name into a glamorous offer, with fabulously-tailored garments in drilled cotton, denim, tweeds and other utilitarian and sometimes unusual fabrics.
From the get-go music played a powerful part of the Demob mix; their legendary warehouse parties gave breaks to such club pioneers as Noel Watson.
Arguably the most prominent designer associated with Demob was Willie Brown, who had made his name at the fashion-forward Modern Classics in Shoreditch’s Rivington Street.
//71 Rivington Street, London EC2, 1980. Photo: Derek Ridgers//
Within a few years Brown had established his own Old Town imprint with a satellite store also in Beak Street. This introduced the XLNT quadrant logo and the excellence of the designs lead to widespread rag trade plagiarism, particularly the heavily stitched “Soul Bay” anoraks with black and white checkered detailing.
Demob also spawned Demop, the hairdressers which occupied a space on the other side of Beak street at the top of St James’ Street. Among the employees here was another person who would go on to make his name in global street fashion (and also featured in THE LOOK), Fraser Cooke.
//Left: ABC’s Mark White in “Soul Bay” anorak//
The yoked prison shirt you see here is made from exactly the same fabric as that provided to guests of Her Majesty at that time.
Once, driving away from my flat in Brixton Hill in the mid-80s a couple of likely geezers in the next car spotted me wearing it and, assuming I had just left the gates behind me, asked what I’d been inside for.
Demob had more than enough brushes with the law itself and was eventually closed after the hell-raising and parties became too much for the neighbouring businesses and local Old Bill.
Brick and his wife Judy went on to found NY stores Smylon Nylon and The Centre For The Dull, where he circulated his much-sought after Smylonnylon mixtapes. Check out where he’s at these days with his online music video presence Brickchannel.
The spirit of Demob’s uniquely crafted take on British clothing design has resided for some years at Will (as he has has been known for a while) Brown and Marie Willey’s great Old Town Clothing.
From their Norfolk base they produce 50 individually-made garments each week in such natural fabrics as cotton twill, tweed, drill, serge and denim. For superb clothing that will last 25 years and beyond – like those pieces which re-entered my life recently – THE LOOK can’t recommend Old Town Clothing highly enough.
XLNT! The spirit of Demob lives on.
Like leather, latex is the fabric option which brings fashion’s sexual resonances to the fore.
//Kim West Cowgirl jacket//
These days, however, there is little less shock value but we’re still a long way off attaining the SEX shop’s mid-70s agenda of “rubberwear for the office”.
Just last week Kylie was snapped in latex boots on the set of the shoot for the video for forthcoming single All The Lovers and Topshop recently stocked a glued latex range, piggybacking on renewed interest sparked by the likes of Christina Aguilera and, of course, Lady GaGa.
In fact GaGa’s clip for Poker Face inspired Kim West to re-enter the scene last year with a new collection which riffs on her triumphs of the 80s and 90s and updates her designs for the 21st Century.
//West interviewed by Jonathan Ross, early 90s//
“Watching the video made me realise that my designs still had relevance because I was always about fashion as much as fetish,” says West, who put her label on ice in 1994 after moving into documentary-making and also to Los Angeles with her husband and family.
//Tony James, Sigue Sigue Sputnik; Adam Ant//
//Kylie Minogue; Isabella Rosselini//
As you can read in this bio, during her first decade in fashion, West broke into the mainstream via performers such as Madonna, Adam Ant and Sigue Sigue Sputnik, top-flight fash-mag photoshoots and, not least, supplying the white stockings worn by Naomi Campbell when she took that tumble in 1993.
//Naomi Campbell, Westwood catwalk, 1993. Photo: Niall McInerney//
Now West is capitalising on demand for latex with a complete collection, from boudoir accoutrements to bridalwear and everything in between.
“I am also doing a basic range of 10 items costing from £25 for a short skirt to leggings at £60,” says West. “Bargain!”
//Ribbon bag; Classic bra, G-string and suspender belt//
Though West mourns the passing of such creative hives as Kensington Market and the Great Gear Market, as well as Johnson’s and Western Styling (which stocked her signature fringed cowboy jacket originally), she is bouyant about the opportunities of the digital age and maintains a firing-on-all-cylinders website which includes a blog (where she recently pointed to the anomaly of Youtube age-encrypting her clips but not those of, say, GaGa).
Maintenance and care (usually with application of talcum powder) has always been an issue with latex, but one West believes she has overcome, first by teaming with the makers of conditioner/lubricant Pjur.
//Boudoir stool; Classic mac//
And soon she will be announcing the launch of a totally new fabric, called Glyde On.
“It’s latex that doesn’t need talc, Pjur or polishing – just slip it on!” West explains. “Glyde On puts latex on a level pegging with every other fabric, though there is so much more you can do with it. This is fashion not fetish.”
We’re very flattered that this blog – “El Look” – is being featured today by leading Spanish online magazine Itfashion.
“The Look presents large amounts of new information, often first-hand from Paul Gorman’s personal archive, packed with fresh insights into a vast range of subjects,” writes Estel Vilaseca, who has run Itfashion since 1999.
Estel is a freelance fashion editor, consultant (having worked with the likes of Dresslab), and the author of a number of books; her latest is out next month: Runway Uncovered: The Making Of A Fashion Show.
Gracias Estel! Follow her and Itfashion on twitter here.
Today we wash away the aftertaste of Mark Gatiss‘ woeful Malcolm McLaren impersonation (in the other night’s equally dire BBC Boy George docudrama Worried About The Boy) with some vintage provocation from the master.
//8min 04secs: “We’ve got to make fucking sure we create enough hatred before the record comes out…”
The anti-Pistols letters McLaren engineered to the music press in 1976 are the subject of a very funny scene with secretary Sophie Richmond in The Great Rock & Roll Swindle.
Yet none has been published before. Until now.
This missive from a late 1976 issue of music paper Sounds appeared amid the media frenzy over the Grundy fiasco and the chaotic Anarchy tour.
Capturing the fatuous tone of his hero Joe Orton’s troublemaking correspondent Edna Welthorpe, “Roxy Music follower” says the group are “a bunch of bloody loonies whose manager is just as bad, running a sex shop…” and even mentions the line Richmond uses in The Swindle: “I doubt if they’ve got one O-Level between them.”
We especially like the description of punk attire: “Tatty clothes pinned together with last week’s porridge.”
The music press letters were but one facet of McLaren’s arsenal of incitement, yet they helped achieve the same result as Orton’s Welthorpe character (who regularly lambasted the controversial playwright in print).
The fires of moral outrage were stoked and, more satisfyingly, the attention of polite society (in this case the moribund music business) was wholly engaged. An audacious manouevre by anybody, let alone a rock & roll manager, and totally in keeping with the invention, wit, style and chutzpah which McLaren embodied and Worried About The Boy miserably failed to evoke.
Over at mrsgorman.com, Mrs G is celebrating Cheap Chic, one of the greatest fashion books of all time.
Cheap Chic is notable on many fronts, not least that it is the very first book to make mention of Sex, the shop opened by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood at 430 King’s Road in the spring of 1974.
Exuding Them-ness from every pore, the enduring exquisite Duggie Fields pointed out that Sex was “not fashionable…bits of furs, porno embroidered T-shirts and humorous clothes. My idea of clothes is to make myself smile. I like that in others too. I don’t think clothes should be serious.”
This is an aspect of the boutique which is all-too forgotten; that, behind the commitment, subversive art and anarchic politics, lurked the wit and laughter which underpinned the late McLaren’s life and work. This attracted a clientele which was in no way “punk”, despite the revisionism of recent years.
//430 King’s Road, Sw3, 1975. Photo: Peter Schlesinger//
Read all about Cheap Chic here.
Long before SEX served up, er, sex from 430 King’s Road, Mr Freedom – which started out from the same premises – supplied clothes which fused a celebration of sexuality with a bedazzling take on pop art and trash culture iconography.
This was outlined in a May 1971 eight-page colour feature in short-lived men’s magazine Club delivered to us piping hot from the archive of our pal Steven Millington.
The report by the ever spot-on Michael Roberts with photographs by Mike Berkofsky pointed to the fashion-forward velvet hot-pants, bumster trousers, ice-cream brooches and Disney licensing by Freedom founder Tommy Roberts and partner Trevor Myles (who exited to establish Paradise Garage).
By the time the Club piece was published, Mr Freedom had been based at 20 Kensington Church Street for six months. It’s interesting to note the range included “Teddy Boy suits” (as well as boiler suits and “huge bovver boots”), presaging in part the stock at Let It Rock when the late Malcolm McLaren took over 430 King’s Road from Myles in November 1971.
As it happened, Mr Freedom did not last much more than a year in Kensington. Lack of financial controls and overheads including the cost of operating a warehouse spelled the end of the shop, which was superceded by City Lights Studio in Covent Garden.
Still, the Club article provides a superb showcase for Mr Freedom, highlighting such clothes as the skull-and-crossbones tee as worn by Marc Bolan and Freedom designers Jim O’Connor and Pamla Motown’s wonderful and now highly collectible baseball suit.
Around the same time Michael Roberts took the opportunity to include Roberts and Myles in a separate Club piece on six of London’s leading auto-fiends, Tommy with his pillar-box red V8 Pilot and Trevor with the Paradise Garage Mustang tiger-striped and flocked by Electric Colour Co.
We’re really grateful to Steven M for thinking of THE LOOK as the place to showcase these fantastic editorial pages; check out his alter-ego Lord Dunsby’s sterling retrographic illustrative work here.
Those wonders of Wonder Workshop John Dove & Molly White have entered an exciting new phase in their illustrious career with representation by leading London gallerist Paul Stolper.
//Sid TV No 2. John Dove & Molly White//
It is via Stolper that the Doves are previewing their latest artwork at the London Original Print Fair, which opens at The Royal Academy with a private view tonight.
John and Molly’s new work comprises screen-prints on hand-made rag paper created from recycled T-shirts.
//Siouxsie Face No 2 2009. John Dove & Molly White/
Now they are preparing for a show at Stolper’s Museum Street gallery. “Our prints are hybrids which have evolved over many years of producing rock & roll and punk images on T-shirts,” says John. “When you first create the image, you take great care to develop every nuance and facet of the print but, as you continue to repeat the process, you may eliminate some screens or colours and streamline the various stages of the print.
//Westernise 2009. John Dove & Molly White//
“These prints on paper retain all the character of that journey but we’ve revisited the image and returned to that careful nurturing.”
At the Fair Stolper is also representing prints by Damien Hirst, Peter Blake, Ben Kelly & Morph and Kevin Cummins, and among his other clients are Peter Saville, Jeremy Dellerand Gavin Turk.
“We have the greatest admiration for all of those guys and are so pleased to be working with Paul,” says John, who views his and Molly’s new artistic direction as a long-term proposition.
“We already have a new set of images waiting in the wings but I think there will be enough from our ‘back catalogue’ to keep the editions refreshed for the next five years.”
Bit late I know, but here are some exclusive photos (courtesy of Chelsea Space director Donald Smith) from the recently staged discussion between Mick Jones and I as part of the Shards Of Utopia evening at Tate Britain.
//Listening to the introduction from the evening’s moderator Jen Thatcher//
Donald is the key connector: Mick’s Rock & Roll Public Library made a return for a concentrated period to Chelsea Space as part of the gallery’s fifth birthday celebrations, while my Barney Bubbles exhibition will be held there in September – more details soon.
Clad in an Adam Of London chalk-stripe two-piece suit against a backdrop of some of the paperbacks from his collection, Mick revealed he has two copies of my Barney book Reasons To Be Cheerful. This was flattery indeed; my admiration for the man goes back to The Rainbow in May 1977 and flourished through his B.A.D. years onto Carbon/Silicon and the recent and rightly acclaimed collaboration with Gorillaz.
//With Tate curator Cecilia Wee//
Shards Of Utopia was curated by writer/academic Cecilia Wee; Mick and I were down to natter about the sci-fi and conspiracy theory books in his library but we couldn’t let the opportunity go without discussing the importance of Malcolm McLaren.
My fascination for McLaren’s creation of brave new worlds, alternate spaces and artificial environments (see Let It Rock, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, SEX, Seditionaries, Worlds End and Nostalgia Of Mud) was enlarged upon by Mick’s formative memories of not only frequenting those shops but also witnessing the Sex Pistols live for the first time.
“You came away a different person from all those experiences,” he said. “Without Malcolm, none of us would be doing what we’re doing today. It’s so sad we won’t hear any more of his great ideas; not just the Pistols and the shops but things like Waltz Darling, the Surf Nazis film, Duck Rock…it was just endless with him.”
For a select few the evening ended with Mick accompanying himself at Chelsea Space on acoustic for a rendition of Should I Stay Or Should I Go?. Amid rumours of a B.A.D. reformation, the success with Gorillaz and the acceptance of the Rock & Roll Public Library as a living, breathing and evolving creative environment, the answer is a very definite: don’t be going anywhere soon, Mick. We loves ya.
Since the genius Shawn Stussy has recently re-entered the game with a great new blog and new label S/Double Studio (thanks for hipping us, Disney Rollergirl) it seems fitting we should play out with a fave of THE LOOK and one which inextricably links Mick to the International Stussy Tribe – B.A.D.’s The Globe:
Proud to have known you.
“It all seemed much more romantic with him than without him. It made you feel you had potential, made you feel you could do something. He was that kind of guy, he gave you that sort of sense. It’s a wonderful and rare talent. He was a wonderful man.”
Malcolm McLaren on Robert Fraser, Groovy Bob, Harriet Vyner,Faber & Faber, 1999.
Props to the eagle-eyed Miss Peelpants for spotting the series of youtube clips using footage culled from 1969 German TV documentary London Aktuel.
Our favourite is this clip filmed in and around the recently opened Mr Freedom at 430 King’s Road, Chelsea. Seeing the fabled jersey t-shirt dresses in all their glory is a special treat, as is this clear evidence of Tommy Roberts’ and Trevor Myles’ fashion-forward approach to licensing Disney images and incorporating them, Pop Art style, into design.
//430 King’s Road ,London SW3 1970. Pic: David Parkinson//
Read all about that in Chapter 16 of THE LOOK.
Also note the black with red piping bolero top worn in the latter half; this was one of the incredible creations of the sadly-departed Dinah Adams, who also worked for Granny Takes A Trip just down the road at 488 King’s Road.
//Dinah Adams, 1970: “A brilliant innovator.”//
As former Granny’s owner and King’s Road scenester Gene Krell has said here before, Adams was “a gifted personality…a brilliant innovator who never got her due”. There are other London Aktuel segments – with more space-age bachelor pad music – featuring Biba, Laura Of London and Mary Quant.
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