Paul Gorman in conversation with Lee Brackstone

Paul Gorman (United Kingdom) is a writer, curator and cultural commentator. His books include The Story Of The Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture, The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren, Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall Of The Music Press, The Look: Adventures in Rock & Pop Fashion, The Wild World of Barney Bubbles, Straight with Boy George and Nine Lives with Goldie. Gorman has also contributed to the world's leading publications and staged exhibitions concerning fashion, media and visual and popular culture in the US, Denmark, France and the UK.
At Crossing Border he will talk about his new book Granny Takes a Trip.

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.

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.

Beautifully illustrated with archival images of the shop, principal players and the clothes themselves, this book concludes with a never-seen-before 48-page tour through the Rolling Stones' wild wardrobe of sartorial delights tailored and sold in the original shop.