Here, for your delectation, are two images, both 1974 but never before juxtaposed: the New York Dolls and a crowded rock festival that is being used to market jeans. You wanna know why the Dolls were so important? I think this juxtaposition says it all.
Landlubber were an American company, the advert is from the back of Creem January 1974. I wasn’t familar with the brand, but they were sold in the UK.
I never owned a pair of bell bottoms but I did wear Skinners . . .
In the January ‘74 issue of Creem, their fashion correspondent, Lisa Robinson, reported on her recent visit to Paris and the city’s obsession with denim, which was generally more expensive and better cut than Landlubbers, she wrote, but Parisians were also wearing good looking but poorly made in Spain Lois jeans. The worst aspect of French street fashion she found was the vogue for U.S. college sweatshirts. Oh well, French taste and all that. Meanwhile, the Parisians had shifted their fascination with decadent Americana in shape of the Velvet Underground in favour of the New York Dolls. Anticipation was high for the band’s December Olympia gigs.
Staying with the denim theme her piece is illustrated with four images from the ‘Denim Art Show at the Serendipity in NYC. Included in the exhibit are the jeans James Dean died in (who knew he wore flares?) that are now owned by Jackie Curtis, David Bowie’s rhinestone codpiece and Bruce Lee’s Death Jacket. Second panel below offers three hand painted denim jackets featuring movie stars. The one at the bottom of the frame, Marilyn, should be familiar to anyone who spent too much of their youth staring at the rear cover (above) of the Dolls second album. In his memoir Sylvain wrote that the image on the jacket is of Johansen’s girlfriend, Cyrinda Foxe, not Marilyn as everyone thinks, but this suggests he’s got it wrong: a one-off either way
I can’t make out the artist’s signature but the date is ‘73.
