23rd November 2023
70’s Punk Fashion
Bin Liners, Bondage Trousers and Blasphemy
In conversation with Philip SallonA good way to envisage how iconic Philip really is, was when he was on stage with the Sex Pistols at one of their first concerts where he introduced their songs, ‘danced around them’ and proceeded to strip off to only his ‘1970’s pink, bibbed hot pants’. From his friendships with Vivienne Westwood and Johnny Rotten, to bin liners and safety pins, Philip Sallon, the Soho legend tells me more…
Just in speaking to him, it’s easy to gather a sense of his fantastically engaging and passionate persona, along with gregariousness gone mad. His sharp, flamboyant tone and rebellious non-acceptance of normality echoes the real essence of 70’s punk. He begins,‘in the very late 60’s/early 70’s I got the title ‘hippie’. That doesn't mean it existed, but you know you just dress in purple velvet flared trousers and a tie dye t-shirt and you're nametagged a hippie as if you're part of some mysterious group’, which he assures me he isn’t. He explains how all the trendsetters in London began wearing Biba, a lot of 30’s, 40’s and 50’s revival and other retro style clothes at the start of the 70’s. Philip in particular opted for dashing 1930’s tail suits and dinner jackets that saw him catching wacky attention right from the start.
‘My sister took me into Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren’s shop in 1973 where I was suddenly confronted with teddy boy suits, mohair jumpers and stiletto shoes. Remember, women were still wearing stilettos from the 60’s, but Vivienne was reviving them long before they’d even re-happened’. He talks about the discovery of Vivienne's shop as if it was the fashion world’s version of Newton witnessing the fall of the apple. The ‘Let it Rock’ shop in question was situated on the infamous trendsetters Kings Road, although that was not long before 1974 when Vivienne and Malcolm changed the name of it to ‘Sex’. Philip describes their new look saying, ‘It felt like it was all black shiny rubber and plastic, and that was the kind of sex look that they had moved onto. A sort of extension of 1960’s black shiny cat-suits’. He reels off his first hand knowledge of Vivienne’s creative evolution, discussing how after ‘Sex’ she again changed the name to ‘Seditionaries’ in 1976 and had ‘straps that went over you and all that weird bondage stuff which you would have worn in punk days’. A style totally emanating from Vivienne and Malcolm.
Philip’s elaborate descriptions made me realise the graphic subversive t-shirts, head to toe tartans and leather looks, that somewhat embody the mid to late 70’s punk spirit, styled with the spiky hairstyles and gothic eyeliner, are now milestones in British fashion history.
‘She brought in zips, and had them going all up the trousers. No one had done that. She had bondage straps going between the legs, and parachute tops covered in straps too.’
Philip sincerely assures me, in a tone of voice that means business, ‘She really, really created a whole new look there, and that was when it was considered punk to wear bondage trousers.’
Looking back now, it is clear that people like Philip and Vivienne were revolutionary. He explains how ‘in 1974 pre-punk I bought 1950’s Hawaiian shirts and people used to say ‘are you wearing your pyjamas?’. Nowadays if you saw anyone wearing that it’s unlikely you would look twice. But having spoken to Philip, he made me whole-heartedly grasp the ingenuity of doing something like that back in the 70’s. For someone so much younger like me, it’s essential to understand this mindset the rest of society would have had, stuck in their early 70’s styles of flares, platforms and v-neck tank tops.
The conversation with Philip digresses slightly in the direction of heritage, as he shares his views and experiences that I find incredibly eye-opening. He enlightens me on his Jewishness and the expectations that come with that, ‘In 1974 I crept my way into a gay club and thought if anyone sees me I’m in trouble with all the masses of sexually normal Jewish people I’d be hanging around with’.
He begins explaining how a friend of his, Caroline, a nice straight Jewish girl turned ‘lesbian DJ’, started going with him to the El Sombrero nightclub in Kensington. ‘It was a famous place, and I know David Bowie and Ossie Clark used to go there too.’ Philip and his glamorous Jewish friend Jacquie used to ballroom dance there to disco music, with him wearing ‘a top hat and tails’, putting a new spin on formal tailoring.
‘What I did in the 70’s was I’d go to a club and bring in loads of freaky people which meant all the gay ones would leave, hence I inadvertently destroyed these places.’
Around early 1976 Philip met a group in South London at a party, who were later dubbed by Vivienne Westwood as the ‘Bromley Contingent’, and he casually mentioned to them there about a lesbian club that he hung out at called Louise’s. He wonderfully describes this ageing, extravagant Madame Louise, who was greeting the crowd on the door, as ‘the sort of woman who would grandly hold a cigarette holder. I don't know if she did, but she looked like she would’. Philip rather amusedly explains how ‘Caroline rang me weeks later, and mentioned - ‘Oh there's this little crowd of trendy people coming here’. So of course Philip went to suss the ‘trendy’ crowd out and exclaims to me, ‘It was them! And funnily enough one of them became Siouxsie Sioux (from the Banshees) and another Billy Idol’.
Around this time, Philip began signing in Malcolm McClaren to Louise’s who ‘started bringing in this band he was working on called the Sex Pistols’. This was when Malcolm declined Philip to audition as the new singer of the group, because believe it or not, ‘I was 23 at the time,’ he says in a tone of light-hearted disbelief, ‘and he (Malcolm McClaren) goes - ‘you’re too old!’ Now I may have not witnessed Philip’s stage presence or singing abilities, yet I can create a very good image in my head, and to be honest I think that may have been a missed opportunity for McClaren’s ‘band’.
However the direction of the story begins to take a darker route that lacks the same nostalgic fun Philip has expressed up until this point. He describes his first encounter with the future bass player of the Sex Pistols, someone who was a rather nasty stereotype of a Kings Road punk. He first met him looking at a book in a shop giggling, and as one would, Philip enquired as to what was so amusing… It turned out the book was ‘full of dead bodies of holocaust victims - and the boy said ‘Good fun isn't it?’ Then I responded ‘No it fucking isn’t!’ And do you know who that was? Sid Vicious’. But Philip reminds me that ‘he hadn’t joined the Sex Pistols then and he's the one who ended up killing his girlfriend’, so I think that speaks for itself on the kind of boy Sid Vicious was, in as much as he had no respect for human life.
However, Philip met the new singer Johnny Rotten at his parent’s house of all places. ‘Vivienne and Malcolm brought him round to introduce me to their new creation who people hadn’t met yet. This was as he was joining the band. But from that day on we went everywhere together’. Philip explains how much Johnny loved the Gay Club scene and how when it came to fashion, ‘He came up with safety pins, whereas I introduced bin liners’.
Philip then begins to tell me the story of when ‘all these straight little 1950’s freaks asked me to go to Heaven, which was known as Global Village at the time’. He rocked up wearing a 1960’s suit and hat, then stripped off to a bin liner and was immediately thrown out. However within the next few weeks, Philip describes ‘the whole place was wearing black bin liners and that ended up being called punk-rock’. These days people call themselves fashion influencers, but Philip Sallon is and ever will be THE fashion influencer of not only the 1970’s but continues on in this vein right up to the present.
Philip is rather like Patti in many ways. He’s a social revolutionary that has an utterly fearless attitude towards clothes, explaining ‘I was just the local freak’ who was ‘the first bloke in Britain to have luminous coloured hair’ as 1976 began, before it was called punk. The most controversial thing of all though, is what he tells me towards the end of our conversation, ‘I’m not part of some mysterious group, and clothes don't make you so. I didn’t call myself punk because of that, nor new romantic or anything. I’m not into titles by clothes’ he humbly states, ‘I’m just part of the group of humanity (despite having alien tendencies)’.
It was wonderful speaking to Philip, my phone was like a portal to a time when life was full of colour, passion and experimentation. It’s safe to state that even though times may change, there will always be people like Philip Sallon, Vivienne Westwood and Patti Smith. But let’s hope for the sake of ‘humanity’, the next generation of trailblazers are as fearless as them all. Long live Punk and long live Philip Sallon!