Sex

A small boutique once stood at 430 King’s Road in Chelsea, London. It opened in the early 1960s as The 430 Boutique and changed hands several times before Malcolm McLaren and Patrick Casey took over in 1971. They renamed it Let It Rock and filled it with Teddy Boy clothes designed by Vivienne Westwood. The shop front was painted black with pink lettering, and the inside looked like a 1950s living room. In 1973 the name changed to Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, and the clothes turned to rocker styles with chains and provocative slogans. In 1974 the shop became SEX, with a pink foam rubber sign above the door and graffiti-covered walls inside. Westwood and McLaren sold fetish wear and bondage clothes alongside their own designs. Pamela Rooke, known as Jordan, worked there, and the Sex Pistols’ original members often visited. The designs challenged social norms, showing images from the Cambridge Rapist case and pornographic texts by Alexander Trocchi. T-shirts carried slogans like ‘Prick Up Your Ears’ and featured Karl Marx patches. After two years SEX became Seditionaries, with harsh lighting and bomb-damage murals. Westwood’s punk signatures appeared on jackets and shirts sold under licence to Boy London. In 1980 the shop reopened as World’s End, designed to look like an Olde Curiosity Shop crossed with an 18th-century galleon. A large clock spun backwards on the façade, and the floor tilted at an angle. Today World’s End remains open as part of Vivienne Westwood’s fashion empire.