Passion Ends in Fashion: Notes on SEX

 

Malcolm outside his notorious boutique 

at 430 King's Road (1976)

 

 

I. 

 

When it comes to the band's name, there's an argument to be made that the Sex Pistols should have been stylised as the SEX Pistols, thereby emphasising the fact that their origins lay in the shop at 430 King's Road and Malcolm's penchant for the kinkier aspects of sexual activity and experience.

 

For Malcolm, as for Foucault, sex is best understood not as a natural function, nor as something to be scientifically studied in order to discover an essential truth about human identity, but, rather, as a sophisticated ars erotica - i.e., a form of pleasure which needs to be creatively cultivated and via which the subject might, in fact, lose (or reinvent) themselves. 

 

And for Malcolm, sex always needed to be thought in relation to two other terms beginning with the letter S: style and subversion (i.e., fashion and politics). Add these three elements together et voila! you produce a pair of bondage trousers.      

 

 

II.

 

McLaren's store at 430 King's Road - run in collaboration with his partner Vivienne Westwood - underwent a series of radical transformations and name changes during its history. 

 

It originally opened (in 1971) as the Teddy boy hang out Let It Rock, before then briefly becoming Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die (1973-74), selling a range of fashions for rockers who preferred to wear black leather jackets and biker boots, rather than drape jackets and blue suede shoes.   

 

In December 1976, the shop was reinvented as Seditionaries and it continued trading under that name until September 1980. As Seditionaries, the boutique adopted a brutalist aesthetic and attitude and stocked the clothes that are now considered the epitome of punk fashion (and sell for thousands of pounds at auction).  

 

In late 1980, the store was relaunched under the name World's End and resembled - as per Malcolm's design instructions - a cross between an 18th-century galleon and the Olde Curiosity Shoppe; punks had been superseded by pirates, Apaches, and buffalo gals. 

 

Each of these shops has a unique fascination and history and each has secured a place in the pop cultural imagination. But, for me, it is Sex that continues to most excite my interest ...

 

 

III.   

 

Quickly bored even with his own projects and uncomfortable with the idea of commercial success, in the spring of 1974, McLaren radically refurbished 430 King's Road and rebranded the shop as Sex: '"That is the one thing that scares the English. They are all afraid of that word.'" [1]

 

The façade included a 4-foot sign of pink foam rubber letters spelling out the new name in capitals. The walls of the interior of the boutique were also lined with pinkish foam rubber and covered with graffitied lines taken from erotic literature and Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto (1967). Latex curtains, red carpeting, and various sexual paraphernalia used decoratively helped to create the sleazy (somewhat intimidating) look of an authentic sex shop.

 

Sex sold fetish and bondage gear supplied by existing specialist labels, as well as designs by McLaren and Westwood which were intended to be provocative rather than seductive. These included T-shirts printed with images of a nude adolescent smoking a cigarette; homosexual cowboys, bare female breasts; and - perhaps most notoriously - a leather mask of the kind worn by the Cambridge Rapist. 

 

Lines taken from pornographic texts were also often added to the designs, as were various Situationist slogans from May '68 - Sous les pavés, le plage, etc. - and references to some of Malcolm's heroes, such as the playwright Joe Orton.    

 

Pamela Rooke - known as Jordan - was hired as a sales assistant and quickly became the shop's face. 

 

In fact, Jordan embodied the spirit of the store better than anyone; better than the extraordinary clientele (which included members of the Bromley Contingent as well as the newsreader Reggie Bosanquet); better than members of the band; better even than Malcolm and Vivienne (though it can't be denied how great the latter also looked wearing her own designs) [2].  

 

Sex was far removed from the retro-revivalism of Let It Rock - although arguably Too Fast To Live possessed some of the same sense of danger and fetishistic appeal - and the customers who hung out at Sex were not the ageing Teddy boys who had so quickly bored and disappointed McLaren. They were, as mentioned, kids who had come out of glam and liked to dress up to mess up and weren't shy about challenging sexual and social conventions.

 

Paul Gorman provides an excellent summary:

 

"As an environmental installation, Sex was sensational; it literally assaulted the senses. The hectoring tone of the scawls on the 'soft' madhouse walls, the heavy jersey of the T-shirts showing severe images and text in queasy colours, the lack of natural light which produced a dull shine on the clinical black rubber garments and the powdery looking drapes, the clammy atmosphere, the 1960s garage-punk blasting from the BAL-AMi, all combined to make the experience unsettling, commanding commitment - a big Sex word - on the part of the visitor. When the door was closed, one felt less like a customer than a client entering a well-appointed dungeon, particularly when coolly appraised by the stern-faced Westwood." [3]  

 

Sex was, thus, a truly magical space aligned with McLaren's own artistic, sexual, and political obsessions. Whilst a million miles away from being what we now term a safe space inhabited by those who describe themselves as woke, it neverthless demanded that customers one day wake up and realise which side of the bed they were lying on [4].

Photo by David Dagley taken inside Sex in 1976 featuring (from L-R):

Steve Jones, Unknown, Alan Jones, Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, & Vivienne Westwood

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Malcolm McLaren, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 220.

 

[2] As Paul Gorman notes, in 1975, aged 34, Westwood "cut a stunning figure stalking the streets of west and central London, with her shock of blonde hair complemented by such Sex designs as rubber knickers and stockings and a porn T-shirt or a studded Venus top". See The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 251.

 

[3] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 226. 

 

[4] I'm referring here to the famous T-shirt conceived by Bernie Rhodes and known (by its abbreviated title) as 'You're Gonna Wake Up'. See the post published on Torpedo the Ark on 16 Dec 2012 on the political importance of making lists: click here.    

Wigging Out with Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol: Self-Portrait  
from the Fright Wig series (1986)

I.

A wig is a head covering made from human or animal hair; or, rather less convincingly, synthetic fibres. Whilst concealing baldness is certainly a popular reason for wearing one, there are many others; some people wear them on religious grounds, for example; some do so simply for the pleasure of enhancing, disguising, or transforming their appearance. 

The Case of Andy Warhol is particularly interesting ...


II.

If, initially, Warhol wore a wig as a young man in the 1950s in order to hide prematurely thinning hair, he eventually styled his public persona upon a never anything but artificial looking collection of silver-white wigs. Indeed, Warhol's wig-wearing might even be seen as a wonderful piece of performance art concerned with self-creation and self-promotion.    

Made from hair imported from Italy and sewn by famous New York wig maker Paul Bochicchio, Warhol opted for his trademark silver-white wig in order to look slightly alien and also in the knowledge that if you have always looked old, no one can guess your real age. Allowing his own hair to protrude at the bottom of the wig ensured no one mistook it for anything other than a piece of artifice.

Strangely, however, just as the wig came to be seen by others as Andy's natural look, so too did Warhol grow to feel it was an essential element of his identity - we might almost say that just as some wear their hearts upon their sleeves, he wore his soul upon his head. 

And so it is that when Warhol had his wig snatched off his head by a young woman at a book signing in October 1985, it was as much a violent assault as when Valerie Solanas shot and seriously injured the artist back in the summer of '68. Indeed, Warhol described this shocking and painful later event as the day his greatest nightmare came true. 

Nevertheless, real trooper that he was, Warhol simply pulled up the hood on his Calvin Klein coat, smiled, and continued signing copies of his newly published work America. It might also be noted that although the perpetrator of the assault was held until the police arrived, no charges were pressed.


See: Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries, ed. Pat Hackett, (Penguin Books, 2010). In the entry covering this wig-grabbing incident at the Rizzoli bookstore in the Soho district of Manhattan, Warhol describes his assailant as very pretty and well-dressed and suggests that this may have been what prevented him from pushing her over the balcony.  

In Memory of Valerie Solanas

Mary Daly was right to say that anti-feminism is merely the political expression of misogyny. And doubtless the above is intended as a piece of anti-feminist polemic, although, ironically, it echoes the writings of Valerie Solanas fighting her one woman war against male power in the SCUM Manifesto.

Could it be that Pat Robertson is secretly part of the Men's Auxiliary, working diligently to undermine the credibility and authority of his own type? Sadly, probably not. 

But it's because of pricks like him that I support all women who desire to happily idle away their time in ways of their own choosing (including infidelity, infanticide, paganism, socialism, and lesbianism); women who know that sometimes you have to scream to be heard - and sometimes you just have to pull the trigger.