Zips, rubber and straps: elements that defined the physical style of the radical 70s, and the fashion inventions that legend Malcolm McLaren spun out for the world. In a rare video, the godfather of the British radicals explains the origins of the ultimate Punk fashion item, the infamous bondage trousers. 

With a flipboard to hand, the fashion designer, musician, visual artist and former manager of the Sex Pistols illustrates the best way to make yourself a pair of subversive trousers, complete with a leg-binding strap and a round the crotch zip.  And of course it had to be the color that defined the generation: moody, nihilistic black.  Now this is how you dress a defiant generation, with 'sex and rubberwear for the office'.  

A new exhibition gets to the real roots of how the purveyor of Punk conceived and brought it to England by examining the artists who he not only was inspired by but sometimes interacted with— leading artists of the Situationist and Beat movements: King Mob, William Burroughs, Asger Jorn and Guy Debord.  Eyes for Blowing up Bridges (a phrase co-opted from the Marquis de Sade) highlights the anarchic spirit of the era, captured in film, sound, literature, painting, ephemera and fashion.

Eyes for Blowing up Bridges presents the porn novels of Trocchi and the revolutionary texts of King Mob Echo that McLaren consumed, as well as his notes, personal items and designs that encapsulate the disruptive, nihilistic tone of the iconic British subculture.

It’s the first time in the UK that the only existing images of McLaren’s student paintings are exhibited, as well as his final work of art, Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century, which has only been fully screened twice elsewhere

Check out Eyes for Blowing up Bridges at the John Hansard Gallery, curated by David Thorp and Paul Gorman, from 26 September – 14 November