Seditionaries
Clothes for heroes, prostitutes & dykes
In December 1976 the shop was again re-designed and re-opened as Seditionaries and was a complete contrast to the in your face SEX design. Now the shop presented a…
A fortress-like atmosphere of impenetrability was enforced by an apparently anonymous facade based around stark neon, metal grills, an etched name-plate and exposed venting. ‘The shop had to look like a ruin, albeit a perfectly designed ruin,’ said McLaren. With bright nylon-covered Adeptus seating, photographic murals adorning the walls displayed scenes of devastation in the aftermath of the Dresden bombings, lit by harsh lighting, some beaming through the jagged holes McLaren himself punched into the ceiling. Anothermag.com
It was an anti-shop in that it didn’t blatantly display its wares to entice customers or its name as a brand. To get there was a 30 minute/1 mile walk from the tube at Sloane Square and by mid-1977 you would also have the threat of violence from Teddy boys or football hooligans. You had to want to come in and buy and in a twist you the buyer would be assessed if you were good enough for the clothes. This iteration of the shop would see out the last of Punk and the Sex Pistols.
Jordan Mooney: Some people would come in the shop and just want to grab something because they had money and I would say to people, ‘You can’t buy that. You shouldn’t buy that, it’s not for you’. Vivienne and Malcolm and I were very clear about that and we used to do it quite a bit. We’d really talk to people about why they wanted to buy something and did they think it looked good on them, then why? Essentially we wanted to know why they were really buying it. There was a clear ideology behind these clothes, which is why we were so strict about it. I wasn’t prepared to sell things that looked awful on people just because they had the money to buy it. It would have been bastardising something beautiful just for the money. The clothes were really like works of art to me, to be cherished and taken care of. Defying Garvity
Other assistants were recruited to the shop like Debbie Wilson and Tracie-Okeefe who were strikingly beautiful and photogenic. Sid Vicious also worked there for a short time.
More unisexual designs followed which were a mixture of couture and provocative statements designed to elicit reaction. The first in Spring 1977 continued the ideas involved in the ‘Anarchy’ shirt and was the ‘Destroy’ shirt. The shirt was made of muslin, its arms held on by clips and featured a prominent swastika, upside down Jesus on the cross, a severed queen’s head postage stamp, and lyrics from the Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant with Destroy written at the top. This must have been one of the top sellers as you see so many people from the day wearing it. These were done as t-shirts as wellThere’s even a photo of Mick Jagger in one. Could you wear this today? It was in the news in 2021 that a councilor had worn one when she was 17 because she liked the band but had to defend wearing the shirt.
Great CBS America clip from 1977 of Seditionaries and Vivienne Westwood being quizzed about swastikas and wearing a pullover I’ve never seen before or since.
Artist and fellow provocateur Jamie Reid (described post his death as ‘artist, iconoclast, anarchist, punk, hippie, rebel and romantic’) had known McLaren since the late sixties when the two had met and hit it off. Reid came on board in 1976 and created designs and record covers for the band that were perfectly in tune with Westwood and McLaren’s ideas and crucially the music and lyrics of the Sex Pistols.
The best example of this is his God Save The Queen concept for the Sex Pistol’s 2nd single and arguably punk’s greatest single released at the time of the Silver Jubilee and the height of hysteria against punks.
If you wanted to identify yourself as public enemy number number one this shirt both stuck two fingers up at the queen and revealed yourself as a punk rocker and Sex Pistols fan. There are of course a number of variations, but at its heart, it’s a defaced queen complete with snippets of lyrics from the song.
Another classic almost couture piece was the parachute shirt which utilised vacuum cleaner parts to create another bondage, militaristic unisex garment as worn by Pauline Murray of Penetration, Johnny Rotten and punks about town John Harlow and Steve Davis from The Photons.
Left John Harlow & Steve Davis of the Photons bt Sheila Rock & above Pauline Murray by Derek Ridgers
At the same time, the shop was a magnet for TV crews looking to do a piece on shocking punk and Vivienne was only too happy to oblige. Derek Nimmo (actor noted for playing bumbling upper-class or clerical characters but probably the type of person who would enjoy wearing rubber underwear) visited the shop in mid-1977 when the Sex Pistols were there and got fitted out.
Interestingly as punk moved into 1978 McLaren was more preoccupied with the Sex Pistols and the film about them and more was left to Vivienne to manage. Jordan became involved in managing Adam & The Ants, more shocking t-shirt designs were sourced or made often it seemed just for the shock value like ‘Piss Stained Marilyn’, ‘Snow White and the Seven Punks’, and the ‘Cambridge Rapist’ t-shirt.
That said the couture side seemed to be developing. There are numerous shots of Soo Catwoman, shop assistants Tracie O’Keefe and Debbie Wilson, and even Vivienne herself, in complete head-to-toe Seditionaries clothing and they look like stunning professional couture models. It should be pointed out that to buy the whole outfit would set you back the best part of £150 which was twice the average man’s weekly wage and over three times a woman’s.
Clockwise – Debbie Wilson & Tracie O’Keefe, Tracie O’Keefe, Debbie Wilson & Soo Catwoman.
As Malcolm McLaren flogged the Sex Pistols’ dead horse more t-shirts were produced to tie in with records released from the film and soundtrack from the Great Rock N Roll Swindle that seemed more cartoon punk and the good times seemed to be coming to an end.
Tracie O’ Keefe had already passed away suddenly in mid-1978 from bone marrow cancer. One of the last T-shirts to be made was the tasteless ‘She’s Dead, I’m Alive, I’m Yours’ Sid Vicious t-shirt. Nancy had been murdered in her and Sid’s Chelsea Hotel room in October 1978. Though there’s no cast-iron proof that Sid did it, he was arrested for the murder and this t-shirt design was produced. Out on bail, he overdosed and died less than 4 months later. It’s not even shocking anymore just a bit sad.
The shop saw out its time before nearly crashing with stealing and embezzlement but still selling the old designs and selling well. Malcolm’s energies post-film were again in music, first Adam & The Ants and then Bow Wow Wow and then with Westwood in the development of the new romantic/pirate clothing range.
In 1981 the shop became Worlds End, Westwood sacked Jordan as a wedding present (nice!) when she married Ants bassist Kevin Mooney. Now wishing to sever all connections to Punk and what it had become, she sold to BOY for a paltry £200 the rights to reproduce all the designs she and McLaren had made and even supplied the screens. BOY went into overdrive mass producing and selling in international outlets compromising the quality of the original garments and creating a nightmare down the years for clothes collectors with more money than sense. There’s justice though as Walt Disney sued over one of the t-shirts and BOY lost £40,000 according to Raynor in his book All About The Boy.
For Westwood, there would be many more adventures as she developed and became a famous and controversial designer, though often not with the acclaim deserved. McLaren, ever the maverick, continued to subvert and turn accepted models on their head till the end, an inspiration to anyone who came into contact with him. The simple fact of the matter is McLaren and Westwood were punk fashion before anyone even gave it a name; the clothes were simply breathtaking in their design and intent. By sheer luck, they were entwined with the Sex Pistols who were the aural equivalent of those clothes and then some. Together they revolutionised music and fashion in a way that still reverberates today. They are both legends.
TalkPunk
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