Photo: Steve Havoc, Siouxsie Sioux, ‘Debbie’, 1970s. © Ray Stevenson. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery.
Picture it: King’s Road, London. 1971. Malcolm McLaren starts a shop called Let It Rock, featuring clothes designed by his then-girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood. It was a period piece. The pink signage and “Odeon” wallpaper was designed to put you in the mood to purchase drape jackets, tight pants, and creepers. Needless to say it was here today, gone by 1973, when the show as renamed Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, as the dynamic duo updated the look to early ‘60s rocker styles that came and went, until they found their truth living in the present tense: SEX.
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It got your attention. Loud and clear. The word “SEX” was written in pink foam letters that ran four feet high above the door, the walls covered in graffiti from SCUM Manifesto and chickenwire. Inside was another world, all red carpeting and rubber curtains, fetish and bondage gear. It was just the sort of affront that McLaren enjoyed, while also being a proper honey trap. The shop became the spot for London’s Blight Young Things.
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