Pre-SEX 430 Kings Road in London's
Chelsea district had been the site of several fashion boutiques, including
The 430 Boutique, operated by Carol Derry and Bill Fuller in the early 1960s;
Hung On You run by Jane Ormsby Gore and Michael Rainey from 1967 to 1969;
Mr Freedom from 1969 to 1970; and
Paradise Garage from 1970 to 1971. In October 1971,
Malcolm McLaren and a friend from art school, Patrick Casey, opened a stall in the back of
Paradise Garage, selling items collected by McLaren over the previous year, including rock & roll records, magazines, clothing, and memorabilia from the 1950s. The following month, Paradise Garage proprietor
Trevor Myles relinquished the entire premises to McLaren and Casey. They renamed the shop
Let It Rock and stocked it with
second-hand and new
Teddy Boy clothes designed by
Vivienne Westwood, McLaren's then-girlfriend. They painted the shop-front corrugated iron frontage black with the name pasted in pink lettering. The interior was given period detail, such as "Odeon" wallpaper and
Festival of Britain trinkets, furnished in the style of a 1950s living room. The stock included chains, leather, and sleeveless t-shirts adorned with provocative statements, and was
rebranded with the name
SEX. The façade included a sign of pink foam rubber letters spelling "SEX", and the interior of the boutique was covered with
graffiti from the
SCUM Manifesto and chickenwire. Rubber curtains covered the walls and red carpeting was installed.
SEX sold fetish and bondage wear supplied by existing specialist labels such as Atomage, She-And-Me and London Leatherman as well as designs by McLaren and
Westwood.
Pamela Rooke, better known as Jordan, was a sales assistant. Among customers at
SEX were the four original members of
Sex Pistols (the bass-player
Glen Matlock was an employee as a sales assistant on Saturdays). The group's name was provided by McLaren in partial promotion of the boutique. In August 1975, nineteen-year-old
John Lydon was persuaded to audition for the group by singing along to
Alice Cooper's "
I'm Eighteen" on the jukebox. Other notable patrons included occasional assistant
Chrissie Hynde,
Adam Ant,
Marco Pirroni,
Siouxsie Sioux,
Steven Severin and the rest of the
Bromley Contingent. The store's designs confronted social and sexual taboos, and included T-shirts bearing images of the
Cambridge Rapist's face hood, semi-naked cowboys trompe-l'œil bare breasts by
Rhode Island School of Design students Janusz and Laura Gottwald in the late 1960s, by the beat author
Alexander Trocchi. Also featured were T-shirts with the slogan 'Prick Up Your Ears', a reference to the biography of influential proto-punk subversive
Joe Orton, and text culled from the biography of Orton stating how cheap clothes suited him. Among the designs were clear plastic-pocketed jeans, zippered tops and the
Anarchy shirt which used dead stock from the 1960s manufacturer Wemblex. These were bleached and dyed shirts and adorned with silk
Karl Marx patches and anarchist slogans.
Seditionaries In December 1976, 430 King's Road was renamed
Seditionaries, trading under that title until September 1980. As
Seditionaries: Clothes for Heroes, the boutique adopted brutalist interior and exterior styling: large murals depicting imagery of bomb damage, harshly bright lighting, and cavities perforating the ceiling created by McLaren, who issued them, some with alterations, over the next eight years.
Boy London was founded by Stephane Raynor and Israel-based businessman John Krivine in 1976 on the King's Road. Krivine sold the company in 1984.
World's End In late 1980, the shop at 430 King's Road re-opened under the name ''World's End
. The building was designed by McLaren and Westwood and realised by Roger Burton, aided by Jeremy Blackburn and Tony Devers, to resemble a mixture of the Olde Curiosity Shoppe and an 18th-century galleon. The façade was installed with a large clock which spun backwards with the floor raked at an angle. McLaren and Westwood launched the first of a series of collections from the outlet at the beginning of 1981 and collaborated for a further three years. World's End'' remains open as part of Vivienne Westwood's global fashion empire. == Further reading ==