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Seditionaries
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In 1976 McLaren renamed the shop Seditionaries - Clothes for Heroes. Its futuristic interior featured images of an upside-down Piccadilly Circus and a ruined Dresden. Spotlights poked through roughly hacked holes in the ceiling and there was a live rat in a cage.
McLaren was now manager of the Sex Pistols and a key figure in the emerging Punk Rock phenomenon. The Seditionaries collection brought together all the subversive elements in Westwood and McLaren’s recent work. There were the ripped garments of 1950s pin-ups; the leather, chains and badges of bikers; the straps and buckles of the fetishists. As Westwood said, You couldn’t imagine the Punk Rock thing without the clothing.
Seditionaries clothes were never cheap, but the fans improvised their own gear and the look spread rapidly. Punk provoked open hostility and is still potent today. Westwood viewed it as a heroic attempt to confront the older generation, but inevitably it was absorbed and disarmed by the mainstream. Westwood, then in her early forties, turned her attention to subverting the Establishment from within.
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The exhibition at V&A.
We will post many more images of the show in Sheffield after 29 May 2008.
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