In 1971, a young elementary school teacher rented the back of a shop on Kings Road. The heart of Swinging London in the ‘60s, the former private road of Britain’s Kings had already seen the invention of the mini-skirt in the atelier of Mary Quant. But the best was yet to come. The new tenant was none other than Vivienne Westwood, who occupied number 430 with companion Malcolm McLaren, future manager of the Sex Pistols. The hippy utopia was coming to an end and the United Kingdom was about to feel the shock wave of Punk. Let It Rock started as a 1950s Rock-n-Roll record store but Vivienne soon started assembling clothes in the Teddy Boy style. “I used my store as a crucible,” Westwood would later say when she became a world-famous stylist, “Malcolm and I changed the names and the decor of shop to adapt to the clothing as our ideas evolved.” And so, from Edwardian velvet to torn clothes, to safety-pins, to latex, to whips, to t-shirts with provocative writing, to DIY clothing using tubes, bottle tops and chains, it became a beacon for a street style with no taboos. Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, Sex and Sedictionaries are the names that appeared over its doors, while inside the boutique, memorable pages of music, fashion and youth culture were written. Would Vivienne have ever believed it if someone predicted she would become a Queen of Fashion with Royal Honours bestowed upon her? On Kings Road, the shop’s sign has been the same for some time now - World’s End, along with its emblematic clock running backwards.
The exhibition retraces the encounter between the Hawaiian Kingdom and Great Britain through journeys, symbols, and memories. Feather cloaks, sacred sculptures, and contemporary works come together to restore the voice of a people who crossed both the Pacific and history.
Marie Antoinette: The Queen of Style Who Never Goes Out of Fashion
Featuring more than 250 works, from personal jewels and court dress to creations by Dior, Chanel and Vivienne Westwood, the show traces Marie Antoinette’s lasting impact on fashion, the decorative arts and visual culture.
Wayne Thiebaud: The Sweet Melancholy of Everyday Life
The Courtauld Gallery presents the first major UK exhibition of Wayne Thiebaud. Through paintings and prints from the 1960s, ice creams, cakes and pinball machines become an epic yet melancholic portrait of American consumer culture.
At the National Gallery in London, a remarkable exhibition brings back into focus one of the most enigmatic figures of eighteenth-century British painting, George Stubbs, exploring his quiet revolution in the depiction of the horse, an animal that, for the artist, became far more than a symbol of status or aristocratic refinement.
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