My design London: London's cult design shops, coolest clubs and best independent art galleries chosen by writer and curator Paul Gorman

The popular culture specialist lifts the lid on his favourite spaces and places in the city.
Paul Gorman's latest book is a celebration of style bible The Face magazine
Ivan Jones
Liz Hoggard29 January 2018

Specialising in popular culture, music and fashion, curator and author Paul Gorman has written books with Boy George, Goldie and UB40 and on cult graphic designer Barney Bubbles, design entrepreneur Tommy Roberts and British artist Derek Boshier.

His latest book is a celebration of style bible The Face magazine.

WHERE I LIVE

Four years ago we moved into Ealing Village. I’m a born and bred Londoner but my wife, who is Australian, discovered a development based on the actors’ enclaves in LA and built in the Thirties for Ealing Studios.

The scheme was designed by R Thomas and Partners in the Dutch Colonial style as jazzy, modernist apartment blocks.

It still has quite a bohemian atmosphere. It has an open-air swimming pool and tennis courts.

It’s home: Paul Gorman and his wife have lived in modernist Ealing Village, built in the Thirties, for four years

MY DECOR

It’s a modernist apartment, so we’ve tried to retain that Thirties feel with wooden floors and original cast-iron radiators.

But it’s not all retro — it’s quite an eclectic mix.

A German film crew came here to interview me and the director noticed I had [film director and author] John Waters books, so he sent me an original Female Trouble poster with Divine on it, which is pink.

He’d pinched it from Cannes Film Festival in the Seventies, so we’ve got that framed on the wall.

Divine artwork: their wall art includes an original Cannes poster for the John Waters film Female Trouble (1974)

FAVOURITE SHOP

M Goldstein in Hackney Road, run by Nathaniel Lee-Jones, is a mixture of a reclamation shop and an art space.

He sources really great and odd stuff, such as those big convex mirrors they use in lighthouses.

Nathaniel’s got a fine heritage because his father, Paul Jones, was a partner with Tommy Roberts in Practical Styling which was the great kitsch/hi-tech homewares shop of the Eighties at the bottom of Centre Point.

Opposite M Goldstein is Keith Roberts’s shop, Two Columbia Road which he took over from his dad, Tommy. So you have the two sons of the partners in Practical Styling continuing that great boutique tradition.

The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair at Battersea is also great for interesting furniture and objects.

TOP ARTY HUB

I’m a member of Chelsea Arts Club. It’s unpretentious and fun with a slightly lunatic edge. It’s very strong on equality.

Hottest arts hub: Gorman is a member of “fun, unpretentious, slightly lunatic” Chelsea Arts Club
Alamy Stock Photo

BEST GALLERY

My favourite, Richard Saltoun has just moved from Great Titchfield Street to Dover Street. He’s exhibited a lot of very strong women artists like Jo Spence, Valie Export and Friedl Kubelka, who were really making the moves in the late Sixties and Seventies.

I’m a fan of London’s smaller galleries like Belmacz and Chelsea Space. And there’s a great framing shop in Ealing, For Arts Sake.

  • The Story of The Face: The Magazine that Changed Culture, by Paul Gorman, is published by Thames & Hudson, £34.95

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