//Jah Wobble aka John Wardle: “I look a complete and utter ****!”//
Wobble looked especially scary, with a bouffant blond wig, perma-tan make-up and on-camera behaviour updating and bringing new extremes to the arrogant and manipulative character originally played by Hemmings.
Given that Wobble’s new song is a hard-edged 3/4 time three-minute instrumental bordering on drum ‘n’bass, the brief was that the atmosphere should be rooted in 1966 London, yet with a contemporary air so that it didn’t slip into either Benny Hill territory or pure pastiche.
Hence Wobble’s decision against skinny white jeans a la Hemmings (”too Nathan Barley”) and also the involvement of Missoni; he wore a jacket from their latest men’s wear range and model Laura works for the company, so the label’s retail manager Giesela Tschirpig was on hand supplying beautiful dresses from A/W09/10 and S/S10.
Jenny based her outfit around a red and black op-art mini while Emma (real name Liz) plucked a vintage cream and black striped mini shift from her extensive collection.
With an original chess-set designed by Hermann Ohme to underline the main character’s game-playing instincts, we took our cue from the cool jazz soundtrack to the original film and littered the record collection with the likes of Errol Garner and Chet Baker, as well as edgy mid 60s British r&b exemplified by Georgie Fame and The Spencer Davis Group.
Amid the contact sheets we placed Alan Fletcher plastic ashtrays, contemporary copies of Life, Esquire and Time, an original Anello & Davide ”Stallion range” catalogue and well-thumbed Penguins around the centrepiece: John D. Greene’s stunning Birds Of Britain.
//Lloyd and Liz take a break//
With other scenes including Wobble haring around town in an Aston Martin and luxuriating in a Canary Wharf penthouse, the promo - from the sure hand of Procam’s John Brennan - is shaping up to become an online favourite on release this spring.
John Brennan tells us that there are plans to build a microsite around the clip, tour it around film festivals and include it as a video installation at art galleries.
Jah Wobble’s single Blow Up is out soon on his label 30Hertz.
Check out my contributions to Paul Gambaccini’s BBC Radio 2 documentary Elvis The Brand; the first part was broadcast last night (and is available for the next six days here). The second part goes out tonight at 23.30 GMT.
//Elvis and Bernard Lansky, 126 Beale Street, Memphis, 1956. Photo (c) lanskybros.com//
The programme is part of the BBC’s week-long celebration of what would have been Elvis’ 75th birthday on Thursday (January 8).
In the documentary I cover The King’s style from 1952, when he first pressed his nose up against the Lanskys‘ shop window at 126 Beale Street in Memphis, through Nudie Cohn’s gold lame suit to the flamboyance of the Bill Belew outfit for the 68 Comeback special and Bob Mackie’s crazed costumery of the final Vegas years.
This is detailed in Chapter 1 of THE LOOK, which features an exclusive interview with clothier to The King Bernard Lansky.
Give Elvis The Brand a listen - and remember to wear your rockin’ shoes!
We’re celebrating the New Year with an exclusive competition to win a copy of the spiffing new book 70s Style & Design.
The competition is in conjunction with the Barney Bubbles Blog; the fine folk at Thames & Hudson have supplied us with the prized copy which will go to the person who answers correctly the question at the bottom of this post.
We’ve already detailed the excellence of Kirsty Hislop and Dominic Lutyens’ book here; suffice to say that it is packed with such nuggets as the “Mondo Trasho” spread above, which treats us to views of Duggie Fields in his Earls Court apartment (which he once shared with Syd Barrett) in the mid-70s - that’s Duggie top left in a red cerise SEX t-shirt.
On the right is the 1977 interior of The Rocky Horror Show designer Brian Thomson’s abode, where flying ducks are matched with a lampshade made from a Seditionaries‘ Anarchy In The UK tee.
For a chance to win a copy of this visual feast, send us your answer to the following question:
Which album by Ian Dury & The Blockheads featured 28 front cover variations of 1970s Crown wallpaper patterns?
A surprise Christmas “care package” of nine vintage ties from San Francisco rock&roll fashion collector and dealer Ben Cooney has reinvigorated THE LOOK’s interest in these flamboyant articles of clothing.
Having collected vintage ties for three-and-a-half decades, Ben’s selection has rammed home the joy derived from such simple accessories.
Unlike today’s models - and in particular the ultra-passé skinny noo-wave types still being pedalled by High Street chains - these ties are forever, for grown-ups of both sexes.
The bunch sent by Ben are not the highly-collectible painted variety, but printed in silk and rayon and available in Main Street outfitters and from department stores all over the US from the 30s to the 70s.
Invested with design detail, wit and invention, these come in a variety of styles, featuring everything from atomic art, kinetic decoration and tragi-comic fizzogs with saws such as “Don’t cry over spilt milk” to French beatnik illustrations, canine and equestrian imagery and geometric abstractions.
Would that modern articles of clothing were created with such care and attention.
They also provide glimpses into a nearly forgotten past; who knew, for example, that Hemphill-Wells was “a Camelot of men’s style” in Lubbock TX from the 20s to the 50s? It make you wonder whether Buddy Holly ever visited and considered Countess Mara’s cream-on-green dog-leash adorned necktie.
Interest in these discreetly extravagant creations is regularly revived; the late Johnny Moke recalled in THE LOOK how the Bonnie & Clyde look of 1967 coincided with hipsters such as himself scoring kipper ties to go with their demob suits, while Let It Rock and Acme Attractions retailed them in the early to mid 70s.
As the story in the Evening Standard clipping above attests, Johnson’s in Kensington Market and the King’s Road was doing a roaring trade in vintage ties in 1980, by which time forward-thinking clubbers such as Chris Sullivan and performers led by August Darnell were making sure they became an essential part of that decade’s wardrobe.
//Chris Sullivan, 1980. Photo: Graham Smith//
The 90s Swing revival and the 00s rockabilly/burlesque scene witnessed re-entries of the colourful and often wide vintage tie. Wherever we’re headed in the ’10s, the hundred or so in THE LOOK’s possession will remain an essential part of the wardrobe (though not worn all at once, obviously).
The latest fashion collaboration from Berlin art/music collective Chicks On Speed has been a stunning silk scarf design for art project-cum-label Little Red Riding Hood.
Using the theme “Love Cats”, CoS - Australian Alex Murray-Leslie and American Melissa Logan - decorated their LRRH scarf with graphics and appliques. CoS have previously worked with such designers as Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Karl Lagerfeld, Jeremy Scott and Lisa Walker as well as artists Deborah Schamoni (who directed their clips for We Don’t Play Guitars and Glamour Girl) and Douglas Gordon.
Recently Murray-Leslie took part in a performance during Paris Fashion Week:
“It’s really exciting when you can no longer distinguish between art and fashion, when the design itself is a piece of art,” says LRRH founder Daniela Goergens. “As Jean-Paul Satre said so eloquently: ‘I am the scarf, I am that outer layer’.”
“At the moment we are doing a lot of works for our art shows,” says Alex Murray-Leslie. “These are only available for a few people to see, due to museum shows being less accessible than making music, so sometimes we like to take things off the museum walls and make them more accessible.”
Currently Alex and Melissa are working with Daniela on the first Chicks On Speed collection for winter 2010. “We´d like it to be super accessible, fun and very LOUD,” says Alex. “There´ll be 10 pieces, a lot of accessories and items with our prints.”
For the CoS performance art piece/solo exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre next May, Alex and Melissa also plan to launch “the first wearable E-SHOE high heeled shoe guitar” with Max Kibardin.
They will also be debuting new stage costumes created with Kathi Glas, Ari Fish and Peggy Noland.
With the Chicks On Speed & Friends pop up shop at Changing Room in Barcelona (which travels to Aoyama, Tokyo in 2010), the scarves (priced 90€ / 120€ with appliqués from LRRH) arrive at a hectic time for CoS; their Theremin Tapestry show is currently at Kunstverein Wolfsburg.
Meanwhile here’s a trip back to 2003 and one of THE LOOK’s faves from CoS (with Peaches) in the days of Nag Nag Nag:
The winner of our Christmas book competition is Lynn Mayes from Chula Vista CA, to whom we’re sending a copy of Iain R. Webb’s Foale & Tuffin book The Sixties. A Decade In Fashion for knowing that the Youthquake promotion of young British style in the US took place in 1965.
Congrats To Lynn and commiserations to the rest of you, but don’t be down - in the next few days we’re posting yet another competition giveaway: a signed copy of Kirsty Hislop and Dominic Lutyens’ excellent 70s Style & Design could be yours in the New Year!
At last the contribution made by Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin to post-war women’s-wear receives just recognition in the recent publication of Iain R. Webb’s Foale And Tuffin: The Sixties. A Decade In Fashion.
//Outside the Foale & Tuffin boutique in Marlborough Court, Soho, London c. 1965//
Together with the current Fashion & Textiles Museum exhibition, Webb’s book places the too-often overlooked pair dead-centre of that hectic decade, selling through Woolands 21 Shop, pioneering with their own off-Carnaby Street boutique, leading the Youthquake promotion in the US and supplying the general public and the beautiful people (including Pattie and Jenny Boyd, Twiggy, Susannah York and Francoise Hardy) with collection after collection of demure yet sexy fashions.
In today’s Christmas special we not only publish these images and an exclusive interview with Webb but have up for grabs a FREE copy of the book to one lucky person who answers the question at the end of this post correctly. Be quick - the competition closes at midnight on Christmas Day - we’ll be announcing the winner on Boxing Day!
//James Wedge, 1964. Photo: James Wedge//
Brimful with original sketches, press cuttings, personal photographs, labels and ephemera, the narrative of this hugely attractive tome is created from the anecdotal and often insightful testimony of Foale & Tuffin’s milieu, among them Derek Boshier, Mary Quant, Manolo Blahnik, Terence Conran, James Wedge (with whom they worked closely), Peter Blake and Betsey Johnson.
//Sally Tuffin and Marion Foale in”Y-front” dresses, 1964//
Webb, whose CV includes stints as fashion editor of Blitz, the Evening Standard, Harpers & Queen, Elle and The Times, was approached a couple of years back by Matthew Freedman of specialist imprint Antique Collectors Club Editions.
//PVC bags by Sally Jess for Foale & Tuffin, 1965. Photo: Magnus Dennis//
“The timing was perfect; this book ends in the early 60s/early 70s, which is when my previous book - about Bill Gibb - started,” says Webb, who also saw Foale & Tuffin take part in the January 2007 60s study day at the V&A (to which THE LOOK also contributed by interviewing another sorely overlooked figure of the period, Paul Reeves).
//Left,right: Prints by Zandra Rhodes for Foale & Tuffin, 1964, 1965. Photos: Rick Best, Helmut Newton/Vogue//
“The most important aspect of Marion and Sally’s work is that they were always on the money,” says Webb, who is fashion consultant at Bath’s Museum Of Costume (which has it’s own F&T exhibition) and a visiting lecturer at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College Of Art.
“From the beginning of the 60s when they were designing the sweet, girly little dresses through to the shop’s closure in the early 70s, when they’d ventured into fantasy, a bit historical, a bit ethnic, Marion and Sally reflected the times,” says Webb. “A lot of designers create a look and stick with it; Foale & Tuffin kept on the pulse of fashion.”<
The lovely folk at ACC have provided THE LOOK with a copy of the new book for the lucky reader whose name is pulled out of the hat with the correct answer to the following question:
Q: Which year did the YOUTHQUAKE promotion of young British fashion in the US take place?
Tonight (December 14) saw the opening of a new selling exhibition at Maggs Bros: Please Do Not Bend.
Counterculture curator Carl Williams points out that this is dedicated in the main to Maggs’ speciality: rare books, but there is also ephemera.
One item in particular tickles THE LOOK’S fashion fancy - this packaged Harry Gordon cat print “poster dress”.
As we reported a year or so back, Gordon’s work has become ever so collectible; at the Christie’s “Avant Garde” fashion sale his dresses, including another of the cat print, sold for £750 a pop.
//Left: Harry Gordon dress, November 2008. Right: Harry Gordon creations, 60s//
If you have the opportunity, drop in to Maggs and scope it out; this hilarious gilt-edged invite to the Oz trials takes some beating.
Please Do Not Bend is at Magg Bros until early January. Work your way around their website starting here.
Currently available from London’s Beyond The Valley (as well as ASOS and Farfetch) is the first collection from dynamic DJs, recording artistes and gals-about-town Broken Hearts.
Taking their inspiration from an unlikely source - Tod Browning’s 1932 classic Freaks - Amber Jane Butchart and Nisha Thirkell have concocted a capsule range of capes, blouses, playsuits, tops, shorts and dresses pitching frills, bows and a print of their faces against solid blacks and reds.
And the duo tell us they have now finished the SS10 range for BTV and are about to start on AW10/11. Busy, busy.
Forthcoming DJ dates include London’s East Rooms, Bern’s Bonsoir Club and the Beyond The Valley Christmas Party in Newburgh Street.
//All shoes Terry de Havilland//
We’ve had a sneak preview of Amber and Nisha’s new album Musical Theatre; it’s excellent and delivers on the promise shown by their fantastic debut single of a couple of years back, Black Cat/Bianco.
Meantime you can keep up to date with Broken Hearts’ antics on their blog.
Head on over to the Barney Bubbles Blog for a butcher’s at some of the great designer’s t-shirts, including this previously unpublished sketch for a tee to go with the Hawklords multimedia project.
//Barney Bubbles t-shirt sketch, 1978. (C) Reasons 2009. Strictly no reproduction without permission//
In his introduction to THE LOOK, Paul Smith reveals how he has maintained his enthusiam for fashion in the four decades since he started out as manager of Nottingham’s The Birdcage.
//Paul Smith, Nottingham, mid-60s. Courtesy: Paul Smith//
Smith said: “You need an inner love, a passion for fashion and a curiosity for “stuff”: art, music, graphic and product design, what is happening in these interlinked worlds.”
//Paul Smith and Paul Gorman, Tokyo, 2006. Photo: Meri Juntti//
That passion was made manifest when Smith not only hosted the launch of THE LOOK in Tokyo but also invited me to curate an exhibition of photographs from the book in his Space gallery .
//THE LOOK exhibition, Space, Tokyo, 2006. Photo: Meri Juntti//
Smith’s inquiring passion has enabled this charming enigma to maintain his position outside of the corporate whirl, all the while heading up a global retail empire to which has recently been added a new shop in Marylebone, central London.
//Smith’s new store in Marylebone High Street, London W1//
A quick glance at Smith’s current activities underlines this curiosity: at his Nottingham shop Willoughby House there is a David Hockney exhibition, while fellow artist Robert Clarke’s show British Birds & Dogs is at the Paul Smith shop Globe at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 until tomorrow.
//Left: Wood Duck, Robert Clarke. Right: The Blue Guitar, David Hockney//
Read all about Paul’s enthusiams and interests, as well as his adventures in rock and pop fashion, in Chapter 27 of THE LOOK.
This evening’s launch of Kirsty Hislop and Dominic Lutyens’ estimable 70s Style & Design provides an opportunity to show off a couple of rare photos we’ve gathered from one of the places which receives extensive coverage in the book: the pioneering boutique Mr Freedom.
//Snapped at the Mr Freedom Kensington opening party, 1970. Top in hat: Pamla Motown//
The above shot of scenesters and fashion movers and shakers was taken at the opening party of the Mr Freedom branch at 20 Kensington Church Street in December 1970. From left they are: Micky Solomons, Mona (Solomons’ girlfriend at the time), and Ken and Pam Todd.
Top, in the hat, is designer Pamla Motown and we’re reliably informed that Ken Todd’s jacket was from Cockell & Johnson.
The shot has been supplied to us by Trevor Myles, who co-founded Mr Freedom with Tommy Roberts; not long after the Kensington store opened, they went their separate ways. Myles returned to the site of the original shop, 430 King’s Road, and relaunched that as Paradise Garage.
//Mr Freedom, 430 King’s Road, 1969: Trevor Myles, Tommy Roberts, John Paul and Gerald Tilling//
The first Mr Freedom was opened by Myles and Roberts in 1968, taking over the premises from Michael Rainey’s Hung On You.
Decorated by Electric Colour Company, one of its notable faces was flamboyant manager Gerald Tilling, while Roberts’ friend John Paul was brought in ahead of the move to the more ambitious store in Kensington.
//Pop art is covered from Allan Jones to Jon Wealleans’ design for the Mr Feed’Em restaurant//
Mr Freedom, Paradise Garage and Pamla Motown (in particular her association with fellow designer Jim O’Connor) all feature in the new book which is illustrated with 430 images, many rare.
//The vintage boom begins, featuring (centre) Anna Piaggi and Vern Lambert//
Hislop and Lutyens have covered the waterfront, checking for everyone from Swanky Modes, Fiorucci and Johnsons to Nova, the back to nature movement and radical architecture.
//Fold-out section including Nova, Wonder Workshop and Mr Freedom sportswear//
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