Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die: Punk & post punk graphics 1976-1986

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McLaren's eye – as much as his ear – for pop talent was crucial. He once told a Ramones fan, Vic Godard, and his pals, "you look like a group", so they formed one called Subway Sect. His gift for turning notoriety into a promotional tool (inherited from the Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and surely passed on to Factory Records' Tony Wilson and Creation's Alan McGee) loomed equally large in his next project.

In New York, artists such as Robert Longo designed album covers for musicians like Glenn Branca, while the photographs of Blondie’s Chris Stein, who shot Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry, offer a record of punk hubs like CBGB.

People ask: where does this movement come from?” said Blauvelt. “It was all against the systemic control of the music system. This idea of provocation in the streets, the field of punk was a social protest, elements of that still exist.” The Harris tweed and later, far wilder, Brit collections gave Westwood her second, and permanent, fashion identity: London tailoring plus romantic gowns, with a dissident edge, labelled with her logo, a coronation orb circled by Saturn’s rings. McLaren's Midas touch came and went throughout his career, but ideas never left him. He blended funk and orchestra on the 1989 album Waltz Darling and recorded the 1994 concept album Paris, which featured Catherine Deneuve. He wrote a song for Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill Vol 2 (2004), and secured a Hollywood deal as an ideas man for Steven Spielberg. He even became an outspoken critic of the burger industry by co-producing the 2006 film Fast Food Nation. He also channelled his bittersweet view of London into programmes for Radio 2 and Channel 4, but cancelled a plan to run for mayor of London in 2000. Perhaps her self-conviction and resilience were there from birth. Vivienne Swire was born in 1941, in Tintwistle, Derbyshire. A northern war baby who grew up during rationing, she taught herself to sew clothes from the smallest amount of fabric. She moved to London with her parents, and briefly went to Harrow Art School, but diverted, needing to earn, to become a primary school teacher. At 21, she married Derek Westwood, and had a son, Ben, in 1963. Dissatisfied with domesticity, she left to live with her brother, who fatefully introduced her to McLaren. She gave birth to their son, Joe Corré, in 1967. On view until 18 August, these rare items hail from the collection of Andrew Krivine, a leading punk memorabilia collector. The Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten came to see the exhibition and told Rolling Stone that he has “no idea what they view as ‘punk art,’ and so why not?”

Born in a period of economic malaise, punk’s energy coalesced into a powerful subcultural phenomenon that transcended music to affect other fields, and especially graphic design. Much of the copy and pasting culture that defined punk is rooted in the Dada collages of Hannah Hoch, says Blauvelt. “Sterling was sourcing works from lifestyle magazines and making gender commentary in the posters,” said Blauvelt. “On one hand, it’s a revival of this cut-and-paste strategy, in another way, it’s a new time period.” In October 1986, when asked about the plans for her S/S87 collection, Vivienne Westwood told The Face, “I’m using my shop as a crucible. The stuff that’s in there is what will sell elsewhere… It’s kind of market research…” Westwood and her then partner Malcolm McLaren had opened their first Chelsea-based boutique in 1971, and it operated not only as a testing ground for global sales, but as a location of diverse and famed retail incarnations, selling the uniforms of socio-economic rebellion.

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When the album rose to number one on the music charts, it was proof “there was genuine opposition to what was going on,” Reid previously told the Guardian. Among those sharing a rented flat with her brother, Gordon, was a charismatic art student, Malcolm McLaren. Westwood and her son moved in, too, and she became McLaren’s first girlfriend, soon pregnant with their son, Joe, who was born in 1967 – but only, Westwood claimed, after she had decided against an abortion and spent the money on a cashmere sweater instead.