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VIVIENNE WESTWOOD S  E  X

In the early summer of 1974,  Westwood and Mclaren decided to invent the shop anew as a fetish and bondage outlet, inspired in part by their recent visit to New York.  This trip had opened their eyes to the outsider status of sexual deviancy,  which,  now as then, has a far greater capacity to shock than youth cult.  In that April,  in a interview in the NME,  McLaren talked of clothes ´´getting more transsexual´´ and mused over the notion of persuading radical psychiatrist RD Laing to design suits for the store. The shop underwent a prolonged refit, and the fact that it was closed for months did not best please the impecunious Matlock.  ´´I kept on ringin Malcolm all the time,  and he told me that it was taking longer than they thought.´´ This isn´t surprising,  when it reopened in September  1974,  the transformation was total.  Outside, the name  ``SEX´´ was emblazoned in four-feet-high pink rubber capitals and sprayed  with slogans from Valerie Solanas´ SCUM  manifesto, as well as situationist slogans and quotes from the drug addicted outsider pornographer Trocchi. Sex was more openly provocative.  above the entrance was sprayed a Rousseau maxim which had benn considered as a name for the shop.  The sex shop people,  untypically,  have political views, of a kind which they describe as anarchic,´´ wrote Peter York in Harpers & Queen.  ´                                                                                                                     PAUL GORMAN  -  THE LOOK back to VIVIENNE WESTWOOD menu