Here’s the uncut version of my interview with Paul Gorman for the September issue of Code magazine. The best part of my job is getting to talk to the most inspired fashion drivers in the world. The worst part is that there’s never enough text space in magazines.
Cover of The Look, an absolute must-read if you love your all time favorite rocker’s styles and want to know all about it. There was never a more complete account…
British journalist and author Paul Gorman wrote the most exhaustive celebration of rock and pop fashion spanning five monumental post war decades. First published in 2001, followed by an update in 2006 and another one in progress, The Look, Adventures in Rock and Pop Fashion is not just another must read style bible to top your night table stack. With his The Look-blog, a London club night and fashion label The Look Presents, all born in the wake of his applauded book, Paul Gorman is on a mission to safeguard the holy grail of flamboyance. “When great music meets great style, that’s when things really start to pop.”
The Look had been on my professional literature wish list ever since raving reviews of the 2006 re-release started popping up in all my fashion feeds. Code’s gutsy timed Rock Star theme literally made me jump to the occasion of digging into this beefy, juicy and bloody fabulous chunk of fashion history, starting in the spring of 1952 with a seventeen year old Elvis pressing his pretty face against the Lansky Bros menswear store window on 126, Beale Street in Memphis, and closing with Hedi -“I was born with a David Bowie album in my hand”- Slimane’s triumph at Dior Homme, crediting rock and roll buddies ranging from Pete Doherty to Mick Jagger. The Look’s threefold foreword, by Paul Gorman, Paul Smith and Malcolm McLaren, had cast a bit of a blues-y ‘those were the good old days’-shadow ahead, but this is the first thing the rock-and-fashion-jive-talking author wishes to set straight in our interview. “The collective conclusion is that the potency that occurs when fashion and music combust has been all but lost as celebrity culture goes into overdrive and big business dictates like never before in this Starbucked age.” states Gorman’s introduction while Paul Smith concludes his with the observation that today “everything is over-considered”, in contrast to the ‘blank sheet’ his generation started out with after the war. Malcolm Mc Laren, who unchained quite the fashion movement together with Vivienne Westwood at the dawn of the 70’s, is most grim about the loss, noting that fashion no longer drives subcultures but has become an industry merely producing product to supply our global mall-culture.
Paul Gorman: “I think it’s just become very fragmented. It’s still out there, but in different ways, like the rest of culture.” ‘It’ referring to that certain X-rated good stuff that The Look is all about; unpredictable, sexy, dangerous style, fearlessly served up by likewise musical talents and their tailors. “There was always boring and predictable stuff around. You gotta keep your eyes open and I guess that’s what we always did, didn’t we?”
Still, The Look weighs heavy on seriously sharp sartorial dressing for men. Although this currently enjoys renewed interest, I guess at least in those first post war decades guys were accustomed to wearing suits? Now there’s a whole generation out there that grew up with nothing but jeans, sneakers and T-shirts. Those can be very rare jeans, sneakers and T-shirts, but it’s just not the same thing.
Yes, young people are missing out on some rich scenes for design. My label The Look Presents, which sells through Topman, offers a limited range by Anthony Price, who is also in the book. Anthony had followed Ossie Clark out to the Royal College of Art and he worked at Stirling Cooper, which was a very big store in terms of importance. They both merged this interest in 40’s movies, the gangster look, with a kind of soul boy, glam futuristic look, resulting in Roxy Music and Brian Ferry, Duran Duran, David Bowie. Suits were very available when I was younger. Anthony Price’s shop was there on Kings Road less then a mile and a half from where I am sitting now, and I could go in there at the age of 18 and buy a shirt, a suit, and a nice pair of shoes at Johnsons opposite…. Well, we all know what happened with globalisation. Basically that took the road of least resistance, the GAP-approach: American sloppy dressing. The other thing is, there was this democratization of style that occurred in the late 80’s, coinciding with the big boom of initially rare groove and acid house. Those were worldwide youth cults, not select little street tribes. It was absolutely out there in the mainstream. As a result, casual clothing coinciding with that, global companies had a ready audience for the clothes they wanted to sell. I think what we are seeing now is a reaction against that. I see a lot of young guys in London really making an effort, really dressing up. In fact they look quite uncomfortable. Almost as uncomfortable as I did when I was a kid, getting myself into these heavily buttoned suits with tight trousers and all that stuff. It was great, really fantastic, but I don’t want to be too down on ‘it was so great then’, because actually quite a lot of the time it wasn’t.
Also, now, there is no longer ‘a fashion’, but there are many fashions going on and it’s all about pick and mix.
Yes, and it is available to all. You have to watch out for this appropriation of things. It happens naturally. Some stylist will see a punk rock T-shirt, like a Too fast to Live-Malcolm Mc Laren-Vivienne Westwood T-shirt, and take it out of context by putting it on one of the Spice Girls so to speak, which renders it kind of meaningless. But then again: why not? Everything should be up for grabs and available to all.
Because this is a sign of our times, like The Look is all about those signs of the times. They were just much more local or scene specific back then. Sometimes down to a single street even, like the story with Elvis and Bernard Lansky. This ‘fashion’ was only going down that particular curb in Memphis.
Yeah, and all it took was appropriation. It took a young, very bright, very handsome white kid to wear ‘black clothes’, making it dangerous, giving it that edge. That is what always happened. I don’t want to go on about fashion too much, I think its kind of boring that whole seasonal thing. I was talking to Malcolm McLaren the other day and he said, about the punishing schedule of putting out something new every season; “what happens when you run out of ideas?” People do, you know? It should be much more about putting out stuff when you are creatively ready. That was the beauty of this era The Look deals with. All the boutiques we had, probably a couple of hundred by the late seventies in London alone, they were not subjected to that system; they could do things on a whim. Old Johnson was sick of selling Mod clothes, so he just started stocking Rocker clothes. You know, the opposite. It wasn’t dictated by what’s in and out this season. I hate all that; I find it very fascistic, being told what to wear by mainstream high street stores. They don’t know where its at.
You mention an amazing list of influential people in The Look, some of whom I’ve never even heard off. Who would rank on your shortlist?
Well, there was John Stephen for instance, ‘the King of Carnaby Street’, he created Carnaby Street. He was a millionaire by the age on 26, who was openly gay at a time when that kind of stuff was quite difficult, who produced flamboyant clothes for the young men of England trying to escape the grey austerity. He basically dressed Swinging London when everything went day glow. To go into one of his shops was an experience; they were environments with music blaring. Everything we take for granted now, he kind of introduced. Mind you he opened his first shop in Carnaby Street in 1959! By ’64 – ’66 he had 26 shops in London. He is very important and much overlooked these days. Nobody gives him credit but everyone, The Stones, The Beatles, The Who, everyone wore his clothes and broadcast his message of flamboyance to the world: freedom from the older generation’s mores.
Also the Granny Takes A Trip-gang are very important because they kind of opened up a reaction against John Stephen. The action-reaction thing of fashion is a beautiful thing. They opened a very small, very hip boutique at the wrong end of King’s Road way away from Carnaby Street, selling antique clothing. One of them was a tailor and started making long college shirts and brocade jackets. Granny Takes a Trip was the breeding ground for the look that became ‘hippy’ across the world.
I think Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood are the most important people in this story. What they did in the years of their creative partnership, from 1971 to 1984, is nothing less then stunning. We are still breeding from it now. The thing about all those people in The Look is that they are interesting because they fast track cutting edge ideas into the mainstream. Malcolm wasn’t interested in holding on to his beatnik literature and his S&M catalogues. He wanted secretaries to wear his work. He wanted to make subversive statements, particularly about the British attitude towards sex. Just in the same way that David Bowie and Boy George and John Stephen fast-tracked subjects like homosexuality and put it on the agenda. If there is a common strand between these people who make things happen, it is that. Elvis did it, maybe unwittingly, but he brought black music into the homes of the white bread Mid West.
He was also criticized for doing that.
Obviously! All these people were. In fact if they weren’t criticized; they’d be a bit disappointed. You’ve got to upset people, don’t you? Take Kevin Rowlands, from Dexy’s Midnight Runner, best known for Come on Eileen some twenty odd years ago. He has been at the cutting edge with very radical ideas, opting to wear very feminine attire causing absolute outrage. Even among dressed down Indie kids. What he did was incredibly brave, saying; you can be a tough guy but there’s a feminine side to everybody and if you don’t at least engage with that you’re gonna be in trouble. In fact he made a very serious point. His outfitter was Mark Powell, a very macho character with a very tough London tailoring edge, near Edwardian, very dandified. One of the reasons to write The Look was to give people their due; because I felt these people were about to get ignored if they didn’t get a proper assessment of their careers.
How exactly did The Look Presents-label come about?
First The Look became this club, with people from the book and people sympathizing with the book, fellow travellers. We had DJ’s and performances by people like Pam Hogg. It seemed a natural thing, since a lot of these people were nearly forgotten, to explore their archives and present them again. We’re doing that with Topman now but I want to get away from that stuff because I think we’re all just making too many clothes. We all have too many clothes and too many clothes are being sold cheaply. We did very limited runs with Topman but now I’m working with Wonder Workshop, with designers who for instance did Iggy Pop’s jackets and clothes for The Wings and The Stones and Led Zeppelin. I also work with this crazy guy called Romulus Von Stezelberger at South Paradiso Leather on Sunset in LA. He is basically the heir of this label called East West Musical Instruments, who produced leather wear in the late 60’s early 70’s for all these bands we talked about, particularly in America. Romulus is kind of channelling that and he produces incredibly glamorous but very tough leatherwear for the LA set. He made a suit for Prince last week, for The Dead Weather, Devendra Banhart, Jack White’s band are wearing his stuff on their current tour. We are supplying him with the limited edition Wild Thing tee and coming this fall Iggy Pop’s vinyl-leopard print jacket, as worn on the back cover of The Stooges album Raw Power. I far prefer working with people like Romulus for The Look Presents, because we know someone will be wearing it in 20 years from now.
We talked on and on about great music and great style, then and now. Betsy Johnson – who dressed everyone from Jackie O. to Amy Winehouse via Edie Sedgewick and Madonna – now being revived by Opening Ceremony, super-stylist Simon Foxton showing at the V&A, Adam Shecter’s heartbreaking video for contemporary style icon Anthony (& the Johnsons), Roisin Murphy peerlessly donning the likes of Garreth Phug, Barbara Hulanicki disappointing her fan’s during a Q&A after the premiere of her movie “Beyond Biba”, Balenciaga and Urban Outfitters ripping off the original East West ‘Parrot’ jacket. Stories that started popping up on The Look’s blog within days after the interview, so we strongly recommend you read on there. But not before you check Paul Gorman’s thumbs-up list of today’s ravishing rock stars, designers and boutiques.
Paul Gorman Recommends:
Pippa Brooks – “She’s got a band, she DJ’s, she dresses, its a performance. She had ‘Shop at Maison Bertaux’ in Soho and is now making her new shop ‘M. Goldstein’ in Shoreditch, London.” //mgoldsteins.com
Kate Moross – “She’s only 23, she’s a graphic designer and an illustrator, she has her own clothing label, which was selling through Topshop, and her own record label Icomorph Records” www.katemoross.com
Poppy and the Jezebells – “They’re like 16, a funny little Indie act from Birmingham. They came down to London with a copy of The Look, and before they came to the club they went around, spotting where Mary Quant, Sex and Granny Takes a Trip had been. Poppy, who is the drummer, wears her mother’s Biba clothes.”
The Broken Hearts – “They are two DJs from Beyond Retro Vintage Clothing, and they dress in absolutely perfect 30’s and 40’s clothing. They had a great single and they’re really great performers so I really rate them. They’re not precious but they’re really good fun.” www.beyondretro.com
Peggy Noland – “A designer from Kansas City who dressed this Brazilian band CSS in sequined and madly printed body suits. Looks great, sounds great, very sexy. Peggy Noland has a fantastic sense of fun and is also exploring Lycra in quite unusual clothes.” www.peggynoland.com
Pokit – “A great little shop for women’s and menswear including a made-to-measure service. The owner is Nigerian; their offering is very British, lots of traditional craftsmanship. I’d recommend them; they are continuing that tradition of great boutiques.” www.pokit.co.uk
New Romantics Robert Elms and Melissa Kaplan 1980. Photo: Graham Smith.
Tags: Mo Veld, Paul Gorman The Look