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Lot Essay
When photographer Kate Simon lived in Fulham, West London, in early 1976, her home was a hub for the musicians, artists, and provocateurs shaping the city’s nascent punk scene. She shared a house with photographer Joe Stevens, and their friend Malcolm McLaren was a frequent visitor. One evening, McLaren arrived with a handful of freshly silk-screened T-shirts — among the first ever produced to promote his new band, the Sex Pistols. Excited by their raw energy, Stevens insisted that Simon and her friend Chrissie Hynde try them on so he could take a photograph. The image that followed — Hynde and Simon together in one of McLaren’s early shirts — remains one of the first visual records of the movement before it had even been named.
These shirts were part of a small, experimental run that McLaren produced with Bernie Rhodes, who would later manage The Clash. Printed at Central Saint Martin’s using borrowed facilities, only forty or fifty examples were ever made. McLaren would later recall that he began by 'giving them away to people who looked cool' — artists, musicians, and friends whose style embodied the new mood emerging from King’s Road. This particular shirt was one of those early gifts, handed directly from McLaren to Simon.
The T-shirt itself, featuring McLaren’s infamous ‘smoking boy’ motif, carries the provocation that became his signature. The image — adapted from a gay magazine photograph — depicts a young man, cigarette in hand, standing in a pose that McLaren described as “a sexy assassin.” The outline of Glen Matlock’s bass guitar was added to the composition, giving the boy a weapon-like silhouette.
In concept and execution, the design was a manifesto: it merged sexuality, subversion, and satire into one audacious emblem. The print’s mixture of eroticism and menace challenged the aesthetic restraint of British fashion and the moral complacency of the post-war establishment. McLaren later reused the image for the Sex Pistols’ notorious Chalet du Lac concert poster in 1976, making the design one of the earliest visual cornerstones of punk iconography.
Kate Simon herself was emerging as one of the preeminent chroniclers of this moment. As a staff photographer for Sounds newspaper, she captured London’s music scene with clarity and intimacy, from small rehearsal spaces to legendary venues. Her work spans reggae, glam, and punk, but she is perhaps best known for photographing The Clash for their eponymous debut album in 1977 — an image that has become inseparable from the mythology of the band and of punk itself. Simon’s photographs are celebrated for their immediacy, composition, and ability to convey both energy and personality, making her one of the essential visual historians of 1970s London music and youth culture.
At the moment this shirt was created, Simon and her circle were at the centre of a creative network that fused fashion, music, and photography. Hynde, not yet the frontwoman of The Pretenders, was a regular at Simon’s studio on Finborough Road. The photograph of the two women in McLaren’s shirt captures a rare moment at the very inception of punk. Few garments from the period connect so directly to the movement’s origins: given by McLaren to one of the scene’s key documentarians, photographed with one of its future icons, this T-shirt is both artefact and witness.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
P. Burgess and A. Parker, P. Satellite – Sex Pistols, Memorabilia, Locations, Photography, Fashion, Paul Burgess & Alan Parker, London, 2000, p. 55, (detail bottom row); p. 84.
P. Stolper and A. Wilson, No Future - Sex, Seditionaries and the Sex Pistols, London, 2004, p. 26 (for an image of a similar shirt in a different colourway); p. 29 (for an image of the poster advertising the Sex Pistol’s first overseas concert on 3 September 1976 at Club du Chalet du Lac.).
These shirts were part of a small, experimental run that McLaren produced with Bernie Rhodes, who would later manage The Clash. Printed at Central Saint Martin’s using borrowed facilities, only forty or fifty examples were ever made. McLaren would later recall that he began by 'giving them away to people who looked cool' — artists, musicians, and friends whose style embodied the new mood emerging from King’s Road. This particular shirt was one of those early gifts, handed directly from McLaren to Simon.
The T-shirt itself, featuring McLaren’s infamous ‘smoking boy’ motif, carries the provocation that became his signature. The image — adapted from a gay magazine photograph — depicts a young man, cigarette in hand, standing in a pose that McLaren described as “a sexy assassin.” The outline of Glen Matlock’s bass guitar was added to the composition, giving the boy a weapon-like silhouette.
In concept and execution, the design was a manifesto: it merged sexuality, subversion, and satire into one audacious emblem. The print’s mixture of eroticism and menace challenged the aesthetic restraint of British fashion and the moral complacency of the post-war establishment. McLaren later reused the image for the Sex Pistols’ notorious Chalet du Lac concert poster in 1976, making the design one of the earliest visual cornerstones of punk iconography.
Kate Simon herself was emerging as one of the preeminent chroniclers of this moment. As a staff photographer for Sounds newspaper, she captured London’s music scene with clarity and intimacy, from small rehearsal spaces to legendary venues. Her work spans reggae, glam, and punk, but she is perhaps best known for photographing The Clash for their eponymous debut album in 1977 — an image that has become inseparable from the mythology of the band and of punk itself. Simon’s photographs are celebrated for their immediacy, composition, and ability to convey both energy and personality, making her one of the essential visual historians of 1970s London music and youth culture.
At the moment this shirt was created, Simon and her circle were at the centre of a creative network that fused fashion, music, and photography. Hynde, not yet the frontwoman of The Pretenders, was a regular at Simon’s studio on Finborough Road. The photograph of the two women in McLaren’s shirt captures a rare moment at the very inception of punk. Few garments from the period connect so directly to the movement’s origins: given by McLaren to one of the scene’s key documentarians, photographed with one of its future icons, this T-shirt is both artefact and witness.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
P. Burgess and A. Parker, P. Satellite – Sex Pistols, Memorabilia, Locations, Photography, Fashion, Paul Burgess & Alan Parker, London, 2000, p. 55, (detail bottom row); p. 84.
P. Stolper and A. Wilson, No Future - Sex, Seditionaries and the Sex Pistols, London, 2004, p. 26 (for an image of a similar shirt in a different colourway); p. 29 (for an image of the poster advertising the Sex Pistol’s first overseas concert on 3 September 1976 at Club du Chalet du Lac.).