Granny Takes a Trip

Presented as part of Picture This: Designing with Photography in Mind, our new show and events series celebrating London Design Week.

Join author Paul Gorman in conversation with writer and fashion historian Terry Newman to discuss Gorman’s latest book, Granny Takes a Trip: High Fashion and High Times at the Wildest Rock ‘n’ Roll Boutique.

Regarded as the first true rock ’n’ roll fashion boutique, Granny Takes a Trip was a cultural prototype that reshaped style retail. What began as an audacious hybrid of storefront and art happening in the down-at-heel London enclave of World’s End soon became shorthand for decadent glamour in Manhattan and Hollywood alike. With its flamboyant tailoring and embrace of the counterculture, it attracted an extraordinary roster of devotees, including Pattie Boyd, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg, alongside Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, the Beatles and Lou Reed.

Gorman will trace the volatile rise of a boutique powered by a circle of distinctive, occasionally privileged, highly gifted and sometimes troubled individuals who challenged the moral restraint of class-bound Britain and the bland conformity of post-war America, and created an unparalleled engine of pop-cultural influence in London’s West End.

Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase, and the price of your ticket will be deductible from any purchase made at the gallery on the night.