29 May 2009

White Lines: Don't Do It (Yourself)

Someone has already beaten Simon to the idea of reimagining/reversioning the 'You're gonna wake up one morning and know which side of the bed you've been lying on' t-shirt designed by McLaren/Westwood/Rhodes in '74. They even printed them up and sold them.

It was some amateur retrograde curatorial outfit called Sonic Yo–, sorry, The British Library* – though the actual content, the new names on each side of the line, were apparently produced by someone with Clash 'associations'. Photographic evidence (click on the pic for maximum legibility):



As you can see the passage of time has blurred this Clash associate's vision... 'White trainers' beyond the pale. Class fear alert! Bet donk would've been on there if they were putting it together in '09 instead of spring '08. And DIY is a BAD THING too? Right... 'Home improvement' or 'Adding value' maybe... I guess no DIY means no more homemade 'I Hate [insert anyone but Pink Floyd here]' t-shirts. Oh, and Peter Doherty on the side of good? Peter Ackroyd? Trilbys? Nice to see The Clash made the cut though. Must've been close.


* Wow, I was going to put this (presumably non-existent) URL in as a joke, but it's real! Someone sign them up.

2 comments:

owen hatherley said...

Note that John Betjeman has gone from being on the 'hates' list to the 'loves'...

Sam Davies said...

Yeah, that's possibly the strangest one... punk-approved Victorian conservationism. Look out for Pevsner on the '19 edn