It’s been five months since the Stephen Webster store in Beverly Hills opened. I have written before about the second floor curated space, the No Regrets bar and lounge and last month we opened our first art exhibit; a retrospective of the work by pop artist, Alan Aldridge. 

Alan himself came to the opening party along with 150 people keen to view a collection of works so intrinsically linked to the music albums and the style of the 60’s and 70’s.

This show we started planning long before the store opened. 

While having a trim by famous crimper Nicky Clarke, he was telling me about how his friend Chris Duffy (son of legendary London photographer Duffy) was cataloguing for the first time his father’s archive. Amongst the many pictures that really capture the celebrities and characters most identified with London in the 60’s & 70’s were many photos of David Bowie including the albums Aladdin Sane, Lodger and Scary Monsters. I immediately left the barber’s chair with a curling tong still in my hair and made a beeline for the Duffy studio.  

The story is that Duffy for reasons only known to himself set fire to his entire archive of negatives. Once the fire had been doused there was one hell of a mess. Over many years Chris has been piecing together material that could still be used to print from.

All the Bowie work was amazing. The covers have of course been seen but the rest of the images generated around the shoots were what made the collections so special. Most of the work had never been seen.

I wanted the first showing to be in the then unfinished No Regrets gallery. That was one year ago. 

Chris flew to LA to hang the show himself. Seeing it for the first time was something very special for me having been a huge Bowie fan since 1971.

To complete the picture we asked May Routh who dressed Bowie for 20 years to create our stylist of the month window. She chose to recreate the look she originally designed for the film ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’. We even had Bowie’s original hairdresser Martin Samuel make a wig.

Celebrated chef Mark Hix flew over from London to add his distinctly British flavour to the food for the opening party. The DJ was playing vinyl only with a respectable Bowie/Roxy content. The originally estimated 120-150 guests swelled to 350.

The exhibit continues through the end of May.