Mr Freedom:
Tommy Roberts - British Design Hero
Andrew Bunney speaks to Paul Gorman on Tommy Roberts
12 10/15 UP
text: Andrew Bunney translation: Mayumi Horiguchi
- A :
- How much were they actually selling?
- P :
- They didn’t make much money, because it would all have to be ploughed back into manufacture, and they soon started to run out. There was a great guy that backed them to a certain extent, but it was spent producing these designs, which I imagine were very hard to manufacture. Again it’s this quixotic nature coming to the surface and they were out of there by 1974 so they lasted 18 months. There are many stories that surface from there.
- A :
- Such as?
- P :
- Malcolm McLaren was a frequent visitor there, and one time Malcolm had been kicked out and so Tommy and his partner enabled Malcolm and Vivienne to use their lawyer - and by doing so secured their future. No one went to Covent Garden, so they printed maps and Malcolm was selling them for 10 bob (£5.00 in new money) to get there!
- A :
- It’s funny to think about that now, because the flow of information is so fast…
- P :
- Yes, he employed this French woman, very statuesque, and she would go out into the streets as a kind of spotter in case anyone came to the market that looked different or if they didn’t belong at the market.
- A :
- If you were a teenager, and had seen these clothes in magazines on worn on record covers, how would you find out more?
- P :
- You really had to seek it out. I think Bowie was really the great advertiser. The main place that Tommy was getting coverage was in Porno. This is because the fashion editor at Club International, David Parkinson, was featuring all this stuff.
- A :
- Music was important?
- P :
- Music was of utmost importance in explaining where Tommy was coming from, so he got into management – Kilburn and the High Roads with Ian Dury - who also wore incredible clothes. He ordered a suit from Let It Rock that Ian wore. Kilburn and the High Roads were incredible, almost performance art, but of course un-commercial for the record labels. There is this wonderful exchange going on. When SEX opened, Tommy made t-shirts that Malcolm bought to sell in the shop. Vivienne took them and ripped them, and Tommy understood that he got the idea, but not the spirit. So after these years in fashion, from having had a roller, having been bankrupt, he decided that it was it and he was done.
- A :
- And from there?
- P :
- He got more into interiors, and started shipping more to the States. With his partner Paul Jones, he started a store called Practical Styling at Centre Point in St. Giles High Street in 1981. Although he is then totally out of the game, rock stars are going to him, buying furniture from him, because he was a great tastemaker. Tommy was back to buying furniture, adapting, and cherry picking. Mid-forties, living in Notting Hill, He got out of Practical Styling in 86.
- A :
- When did Tom-Tom open?
- P :
- Tom-Tom started in 1995 – the idea was to reassess and present work that had been forgotten. Interestingly, he really stuck the moment, the Brit Pop moment and his customers coming in were people like Noel Gallagher, Patrick Cox; those people that were such big names in the ‘90’s were all Tom-Tom customers. Dave Stewart fitted out his house in France. Eventually Tom-Tom became too small for him, so he opened Two Columbia Road with his son in Keith.
- A :
- What is he doing today?
- P :
- His shop, Two Columbia Road, now run by his son. In the book, Chris Breward (former research head at the V&A) said his contribution in this area is to aid the idea of furniture as art, the appreciation and collection of them and the appreciation of design. So Two Columbia Road is doing that.
- A :
- If you were to talk about how wide the net that Tommy cast was…?
- P :
- I think he definitely changed fashion with street fashion; he definitely changed what we call rag trade or the high street fashion business. His work infiltrated high fashion, even couture to an extent. He’s one of the people that turned Britain from being a fairly mundane place and I think his contribution is undervalued. He’s been a fairly constant figure in the landscape of post-war Britain. A lot of it was about daring – can you wear a pair of shoes with wings on…! I think also we find that people who don’t have our context as British people really appreciate it, Japanese designers such as Yamamoto were always talking about Mr Freedom.
- A :
- The system is very different now…
- P :
- This kind of thing is possible. But because we don’t have these examples, it is very difficult to imagine. There is another way…
Mr Freedom
Tommy Roberts - British Design Hero
Author: Paul Gorman
Hardcover, 160 pages
