Robert Elms

a life in threads

The way we wore

Tapping into an energy that helped shape post-war Britain, this title is a memoir of one man's life long passion for getting the look just right. It is useful for anyone interested in fashion.

A Life in Threads

The Way We Wore

‘London is a giant kaleidoscope, which is forever turning. Take your eye off it for more than a moment and you’re lost.’ Robert Elms has seen his beloved city change beyond all imagining. London in his lifetime has morphed from a piratical, bomb-scarred playground, to a swish cosmopolitan metropolis. Motorways driven through lost communities, accents changing, skyscrapers appearing. Yet still it remains to him the greatest place on earth. Elms takes us back through time and place to myriad Londons. He is our guide through a place that has seen scientific experiments conducted in subterranean lairs and a small community declare itself an independent nation; a place his great-great-grandfather made the Elms’ home over a century ago and a city that has borne witness to world-changing events.

A Memoir of a Shape-Shifting City

London Made Us

The Way We Wore is a passionate and personal account of the dazzling array of street styles and trouser tribes Britain produced from the 1950s to 1990s. Robert Elms' memoir takes us from Teddy Boys to Acid house, from Notting Hill to Soho. A love letter to London Town and the overdressed, undervalued youth who made this city such a hotbed of cool. This is the story of a life's obsession. From Ben Sherman shirts to boxtop loafers, from bondage trousers to Comme de Garcons, Elms has been there, seen it, and worn it out. It's about why you'd rather not go out at all than go out in the wrong sort of brogues, and why you just had to have a Budgie Jacket to cut it in the playground in 1970. It is ultimately a hilarious, passionate social history of London street fashion from the Teddy Boys and rude boys battling it out in his homeland of Notting Hill in the 50's to its end in Acid House in the 90's. A fond memoir of working class lads in tumultuous times and lary schmutter. One day in 1965 the five-year-old Robert Elms fell in love with clothes. His brother had just returned to the family's Burnt Oak council house in a new suit he'd picked up from a tailor in Kilburn. Otis Redding was playing in the front room. This, as his mum would say, was "all the go" - whatever that meant. This, Elms realised, was what you grew up for.

The Way We Wore: A Life in Threads

Paolo Hewitt

Bowie: Album by Album examines every one of Bowie's studio albums in fine detail, placing each within the context of the time in which it was recorded and charting all the albums' subsequent influence and legacy. As well as commentary from the musicians, engineers and producers who worked on the recordings - such as Brian Eno and Tony Visconti - Bowie's own quotes provide a fascinating insight into his restlessly creative mind. Every album is discussed in terms of musical and social impact, along with contemporary reviews from the likes of NME and Rolling Stone magazines, and a wealth of rare and previously unpublished photographs. It begins with an introduction to Bowie's early career as Davy Jones, and ends with an appendices detailing all of his single releases, live albums and soundtracks.

Robert Elms

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