Culture Now: Peter Golding

For this week’s lunchtime talk, Peter Golding is joined in conversation with Chris Sullivan.

Peter Golding – once described by Fashion Weekly as "the Eric Clapton of denim" – joins us for a lunchtime talk. Peter Golding has had a profound effect on global fashion, permanently altering the way we dress. Founder of the first men’s design consultancy on Savile Row in the 60s, Golding went on to create the world’s first designer jean in 1970 and then introduced bleach denim to America in 1973. In 1975 he set up the iconic boutique ACE on the King’s Road, the boutique of choice for an eclectic clientele including The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Omar Sharif, Julie Christie and Elizabeth Taylor, which quickly became known as ‘the meeting place of the stars’.

Throughout the 70s and 80s Golding continued as a trailblazer in both Europe and the USA and with his creation in 1978 of the world’s first stretch denim jean, made an indelible impact on the way we dress. A visiting lecturer to the Royal College of Art and a fellow of The Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, Golding was the first fashion designer to be honoured with this invitation, and later became an assessor for fashion and textile college students membership to its renamed Chartered Society of Designers.

Golding is famous not only as a design icon, but also a distinguished blues and gypsy jazz musician, recording 1997 album Stretching the Blues with the likes of Otis Grand, Doris Troy and Slim Jim Phantom. His collection of Rock and Roll art, ‘Inspirational Times’, began in 1967, when Golding first picked a hand-drawn poster off the ground following a 'happening' in Hyde Park. It has since grown to be one of the most prodigious of its kind, and includes artwork produced for greats such as Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane and Lynyrd Skynyrd and was included in the Summer of Love exhibition at the Tate Liverpool and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art NYC.

Chris Sullivan is and has been at various times a DJ, author, nightclub host, pop star, painter, style commentator, entrepreneur and fashion designer. He studied art at Central St Martins than fronted the Latin funk band Blue Rondo A La Turk and was founder, host, director of and DJ at the world-famous Wag Club in London. As a writer he first worked for The Face in its infancy in 1981, became a Loaded columnist in '94 and then GQ style editor. In 2001, he became a full time freelance journalist filing for, among others, The Times, Esquire, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, and L’Uomo Vogue. He is the author of two books, Punk (co-written with Stephen Colegrave) and the definitive chronicle of club culture of the 80s, We Can Be Heroes.