Granny Takes a Trip
High Fashion and High Times at the Wildest Rock 'n' Roll Boutique
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- 259,00 kr
Publisher Description
Lavishly illustrated with never-before-seen photographs of the shop, its key players and - of course - the clothes.
Granny Takes A Trip was more than just a shop and a fashion brand; it was the original rock and roll clothes boutique, the template for all that followed. What started as an odd retail venture/art installation in a depressed part of London known as World's End became an international byword for glam decadence in Manhattan and Hollywood, combining flamboyant style and all manner of countercultural activity to attract everyone from Pattie Boyd, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg to Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, the Beatles, and Lou Reed.
Unfolding over a decade-and-a-half, this tumultuous story invokes a cast of often unique, sometimes entitled, unusually talented and troubled individuals on a collective mission to shake up austere, repressed, class-ridden Britain and white bread America. Some achieved this at great personal cost as darkness, addiction and tragedy stalked those behind the extraordinary shop facades.
Much mythologised but never told, this cautionary tale has now found its definitive chronicler in celebrated cultural historian Paul Gorman who has had access to first-hand accounts from all the principal figures, as well as notes for a memoir and a much-treasured scrapbook by Freddie Hornik, the tailoring entrepreneur who survived the death marches of central Europe after WW2 to acquire Granny Takes A Trip in the late 60s and transform into an unparalleled pop cultural force.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this colorful chronicle, music journalist Gorman (The Story of the Face) traces the eponymous boutique's rise from quirky, two-room London shop to psychedelia-inflected outfitter of some of rock's biggest names. The store was founded in 1966 by scenesters Sheila Cohen, a sometimes–film extra who sold secondhand clothing in bazaars; her boyfriend Nigel Waymouth; and John Pearse, a tailor who made bespoke clothing for his stylish friends (the name was picked out by Waymouth, who commented that "we were going to be selling... ‘granny clothes,' and everyone was talking about tripping, so we thought it was a funny joke"). Granny first sold down its secondhand stock, before introducing flared trousers and floral-patterned fitted jackets. It then joined the ranks of several other "acid-infused" stores, among them Dandie Fashions, whose co-owner Freddy Hornick bought out Granny in 1969 and opened additional stores in Los Angeles and New York (all had closed by 1980). Drawing on interviews with key players (including two of the store's founders) and Freddy Hornick's writings, Gorman contrasts Granny's style philosophy—which focused on tailoring and bespoke clothing—with the concurrent rise of fast fashion, while vividly depicting the "countercultural" appeal that made it a favorite of musicians at the time. Fashion lovers of any generation would do well to pick this up.
