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to
the end of the world with roger burton
When I left school, I got a job in a factory, spending all my wages on clothes and drugs and music. I got totally enraptured by the whole mod movement. When mod finished I never really got into the hippy thing; the look or the long hair. Then the film Bonny and Clyde came out and it blew me away, so I went out and dressed like a 1920s gangster and I started selling second hand clothes. At the end of the 60s I got a shop in my home town of Leicester, and filled it with art nouveau and art deco and 50s stuff. It was a bit too adventurous for Leicester but London dealers used to come up and buy from me on a regular basis. Then I happened upon a warehouse full of clothes up north, and I bought the lot, took them to London, hawked them round the Kings Road and Portobello Road and managed to sell the lot. It went on from there. Things were going really well, I'd never had so much money in my life and I was continually making trips to London and supplying shops worldwide.
Then punk reared its ugly head…
We'd been supplying Acme Attractions in the Kings Road, but they suddenly started doing punk stuff and all of our Japanese clients wanted punk. So we were stuck with this warehouse full of stuff. So, we went off and bought army surplus, and dyed it all black. We found that the punks would happily wear this stuff: round collars with a pin through and that type of thing.
Here's an old fruit warehouse, here's some ducting, now start your shop…
The owner of Acme Attractions and Boy suggested that 3 of us start something in Covent Garden. We were a bit old to be punks, but we were into the whole look and had access to all these wonderful leather coats and jackets and jodhpurs and riding boots, so we tailored it towards a more sophisticated kind of punk. I designed the shop, which was an old fruit warehouse with a pull down shutter. I kept it like that and we had a monitor outside with a camera on the inside of the shop. We called it PX after the general store on American airbases. I wanted it to be subterranean and dark like a U boat. I was in Mayfair and I saw these guys carrying this old ducting out of this building. I gave them a few quid for it. The building turned out to be the old M15 building with all these old cage lockers and benches, which I did the shop out with. It was all military grey, and very industrial looking. PX did really well, but my partners wanted to get more into manufacturing, which seemed like a pain in the arse to me, so I left.
In the right place at the right time...
I took a stall on Portobello road. It was a horrible, wet Saturday and this guy came up out of nowhere and said 'we're about to make a film set in the 60s. Could you supply us? It's about mods.' Of course, it was totally my era, so I jumped at the chance. The film was Quadrophenia. When production finished, the producer suggested that maybe instead of selling the clothes to films, I should rent them. I looked into it and none of the other hire companies in London had anything contemporary at all. So we set ourselves up as a rental company; the Contemporary wardrobe.
Then a chance encounter with Vivienne Westwood in a pub led to her asking me to work on the design of her new shop at Kings Road. She'd liked what I'd done with PX. I collaborated on the project for very little money. I just figured it was such an honour to be asked to do it.
The Video Age...
I attended the opening for Worlds End after we'd finished it, and I met this young filmmaker called Julian Temple who'd just done the great rock n roll swindle. He asked whether I'd be interested in designing sets for pop promos. I didn't know what they were (this was 1980). He said they were going to be the next
happening thing. From this time on I was doing pop videos for four and five years, for hundreds of bands.
A year after we'd done world's end, Malcolm called me up again about a new space, Nostalgia of Mud and asked me to design that. I was juggling between doing that and doing pop videos and having my stall and it was crazy. Malcolm and Vivienne left it to me and they really loved what I did with it. Peter York wrote about it and said it was the most important shop of the decade.
In the Movies
From videos, I progressed into film. Julian Temple got Absolute Beginners off the ground. I styled all the kids: something like 3500 extras. Halfway through the film the head stylist had this blazing row with the producer who immediately fired her and her partner, so it was left to me to finish the film and come in on budget. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'd arrive there at 6am down at Shepperton studios and there's be 500 people all waiting to be fitted by me. It practically killed me.
I realised I had to be based in the west end, so we took on this place right opposite the Blitz club, but I couldn't really afford it, so I mooched around Bloomsbury where I noticed this building with the windows all caked up with dirt. I phoned the estate agent and looked all around it. The floor was black with oil and the stench was unbelievable. The roof had caved in and it was full of pigeons, and ivy was growing all round the room. I took it though, and bit by bit the floor appeared out of the mud and grime and slowly it became what it is now; the Horse Hospital.
Vive le Punk!
We kicked things off at the Horse Hospital with what seemed like the most obvious thing; a Westwood and Mclaren exhibition. I had quite a collection myself and we dug out all these old punks who had been around the scene at the time. I got in touch with Vivienne and Malcolm who were very helpful, and it was massive success. Vivienne hadn't seen Malcolm for a year and she didn't really want to see him again, but they were both there for the opening and there was this big confrontation. Malcolm was wandering
around going, 'I designed this and I designed that,' and she was saying, ''no you didn't actually, I designed that.'
I wanted to present the exhibition theatrically. So I made all these pink vinyl body bags and hung them like dead meat from the ceiling, and they were all at head height so you could actually touch the garments. Of course it was huge gamble, but everyone was incredibly respectful of the whole thing, and they absolutely loved the way it was displayed. I thought, well fuck the institutionalised museums, I'm just going to carry on doing stuff the way I want to do and try to break the rules
Horse Hospital
Following the success of the exhibition, I realised the space would work as an arts venue, and we started having a couple of exhibitions a year. At that time there was a club called Disobey run by Paul Smith of Blast First records. He'd put on a couple of the label's bands here, and we said let's collaborate on a film night, and so we put a monthly night called Kino Disobey. Paul got some money out of the record company and we borrowed a projector and bought some seats.
Then the Joe Coleman exhibition (the serial killer obsessed American artist) was incredibly successful, so we did more regular film nights and exhibitions, and we got exhibiting artists to curate nights of films. And these days we have stuff on all the time.
As an arts venue, we aim to be as diverse as possible, and appeal to as many subcultures as possible, and not be particularly partisan to any one of them. We're always open to suggestion, so no matter how extreme or mad an idea for a show is, we'll consider it. I know there are certain Horse Hospital regulars who want to keep it as London's best kept secret, but why keep it quiet? I don't want to become mainstream, but there are good things out there which I do like and it would be good to integrate. Sure, it's important to keep the integrity of what we do, but with our track record we can do that.
The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 1HX (Russell Square Tube). Also, check out the contemporary wardrobe collection housed at the same street address, featuring thousands of items of vintage street fashion to hire or to buy.
© Nude magazine 2004. Originally published in issue 3 of Nude (May/ June 2004)