Paul Gorman’s Granny Takes a Trip: High Fashion and High Times at the Wildest Rock ‘n’ Roll Boutique book is coming your way soon.
Paul Gorman only does very good books. Just check out the back catalogue on Amazon for his works on The Face, David Bowie, The Sex Pistols, Barney Bubbles and more. Of course, he also produced the wonderful The Look: Adventures in Pop and Rock Fashion, which is well worth digging out if you can find one online.
Or save your money for this one, which focuses on Granny Takes a Trip. It is a look at one of the most iconic names in the 1960s, retailing over 300+ pages and published by White Rabbit Books.
What’s it about? Here’s the preview:
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.
It features not just the words but also archival images of the shop, the principal players, and the clothes themselves, plus a ‘never-seen-before’ 48-page tour through the Rolling Stones’ wardrobe, which was tailored and sold in the original shop.
Sounds pretty essential if you are a fan of the era. Available to pre-order now ahead of a 30th September release, it sells for £40.
