Glen Matlock, who would later become the Sex Pistols’ bassist, worked there and that’s where he met Johnny Rotten, who happened to stop by the store to buy some George Cox shoes. SEX was the centre of punk and punk, as far as McLaren was concerned, was the way to sell clothes at SEX.
ASICS LAUNCHES ITS FIRST COLLABORATION WITH VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
Let It rock, SEX or Seditionaries, were projects/stores created by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren in which they mixed products created by them and others that are part of the uniforms of different urban tribes, rockers, fetishists or Teddy Boys (the name Let it rock came from a Chuck Berry song). However, the names of Westwood and McLaren have been forever linked to punk after SEX became its temple.
The designs conceived by McLaren and realised by Westwood, established a style that established itself as the canonical model for punk, even though both of their creative evolutions took them to unexpected places. McLaren produced films, and he developed a career as a manager and musician who wanted to first expand punk and later hip hop. He created a cultural phenomenon and saw himself with the capacity to do it again.
With the fall of punk as a subversive element and with its aesthetic acceptance, Westwood began to look for different ways to declare her outsider position and she did so through fashion, an element that up to the moment had only been seen as a means of communication. In 1981, Vivienne Westwood presented her first official collection, Pirate, that mixed geometrical elements, African patterns and shapes that were derived from Buccaneers to create an image that was later developed by the New Romantics.
But it was her last official work for McLaren, Witches, when Westwood started to link haute couture to graffitis, Keith Haring and, for the first time in a runway show, sports sneakers. A design with a triple tongue that we have later seen referenced in models by Jeremy Scott and in its re-editions with Opening Ceremony. Vivienne Westwood’s historic relationship with sports equipment continued with Hypnos, her SS1984 collection that was based on football t-shirts.
It makes sense that when having to develop a collaboration, Vivienne Westwood has turned to ASICS, a brand with a cohesive history in design and functionality. The collection is comprised of five models that will be launched during 2019, with an advance formed by a GEL-MAI Knit and a GEL-Kayano 5 OG, both in a palette of red tones. The GEL-MAI was chosen for its asymmetric closure, something that’s been used quite frequently by Westwood, and the design links back to the Pirate collection through the Squiggle pattern, a decorative pattern that we already saw in 1981. The GEL-Kayano 5 OG is lined in its interior with the same Squiggle pattern leaving the exterior with a combination of materials and tones that renew the historic sneaker of 1999.
In Andreas Kronthaler’s words, the Creative Director of the label: “Asics are brilliant technicians known for their expertise, they are the best in their field. We love the look of their trainers because they are form following function, which attracted us to this collaboration. We wanted to make something real.”
