£250.00
Bedlam's debut silk scarf, neckerchief and pocket square collection. We commissioned portraits from Anna McNeil of some of our favourite characters, people who find / found untinctured life a little dull but illuminated it for us. The Keith Richards and Syd Barrett scarves are both officially endorsed and approved.
The portraits are by Bedlam's in-house artist, the prolifically talented Anna McNeil http://annamcneil.wordpress.com/
The final photograph, of Zelda Fitzgerald, gives you the "Soup to Nuts" progression from watercolour sketch to acrylic on canvas to silk. The canvasses are available to buy for £500 each.
The digital printing is so fine (thank you Hatley Print) you can see the brush strokes.
Hand rolled silk crepe satin crepe 90 x 90 cms are £250 each.
The neckerchief size is 60 x 60 cm (big enough not to strangulate yourself when you knot, leaving nicely floofy ends) at £120;
the pocket squares measure 35 x 35cm and are £60.
Clara Bow (1905 – 1965):
The original "It" girl. Born in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn to a psychotic mother and often absent father, she entered a magazine competition to break into movies. At the height of her fame she was receiving 45,000 fan letters a week. The more prurient publications of the day failed to distinguish between her racy flapper girl roles and real personality, their lurid allegations hounding her into retirement in the Mojave Desert. Chronic insomnia had her treated for psychiatric illness and receiving shock treatment which was neither helpful nor healing.
Errol Flynn ((1909 – 1959):
Tasmanian born with a devilish twinkle, an actor known for swashing his buckler in Hollywood films. A paragon of manliness, when the US entered WWII, he was eager to join up. Failed on physical fitness by all the US services - due in no small part to self-medicating chronic back pain with morphine and, later, heroin; lingering chronic tuberculosis; and numerous venereal diseases - he was criticised for "failing to do his bit". Unable to counter those accusations and undefended by the studios who preferred to conceal the base state of their box office gold, he took yet deeper solace in drink and drugs and the company of many, many ladies including Delores del Rio and Marlene Dietrich from a groaning buffet of willing womanhood;
Zelda Fitzgerald (1900 - 1948):
A southern belle ballerina who married the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. As they became celebrities both in the US and Europe, their marriage hissed and fizzed with jealousy and resentment. They both used the relationship as material in their writing, with her "Save Me the Waltz" providing the evidence against his version of events, "Tender is the Night". While he descended into alcoholism, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He went to Hollywood without her to try his hand at screenwriting and died there in 1940. Eight years later, Zelda, blazing icon of the Jazz Age, perished when the hospital in which she resided caught fire.
Keith Richards (1943-):
Born in Dartford, Kent, a founder member of the Rolling Stones. Inspired by a passion for American blues artists he has written fourteen of Rolling Stone (no relation) magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and ranks fourth on their list of 100 best guitarists. He has been tried on drug related charges five times, only one of those resulting in a custodial sentence in 1967 which was overturned after The Times of London ran an editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?" that portrayed him and Mick Jagger's sentences as persecution. He once claimed in an interview to have snorted his father's ashes but this was later retracted as a joke. By people that know, Richards is considered "a good guy". He christened his record label "Mindless". We are delighted that that his scarf is officially approved and endorsed and is under license to Bravado Merchandising.
Syd Barrett (1946-2006):
Born in Cambridge. A founder member of Pink Floyd, his experiments with dissonance and distortion influenced David Bowie, Brian Eno, Jimmy Page and others. His experiments with acid were less successful, taking him on a trip from which he never properly returned. His behaviour became so erratic that eventually, en route to a show, the other band members decided it was less hassle not to pick him up. According to Roger Waters, Barrett came to their last practice session with a new song he called "Have You Got It Yet?". It seemed simple enough when presented it to his bandmates, but proved impossible to learn. As they practised it, Barrett kept changing the arrangement. He would then play it again, with arbitrary changes, singing, "Have you got it yet?". Roger Waters called it, "a real act of mad genius". During the recording of his first solo album, "The Madcap Laughs" , in 1968, his manager Peter Jenner said, "I had seriously underestimated the difficulties of working with him." Syd walked back to Cambridge from London to live with his mother and retreated from public life. He had studied painting at Camberwell College of Arts in London so resumed his painting and took up gardening. In an article published in 2006, Dave Gilmour was quoted as saying: "In my opinion, his nervous breakdown would have happened anyway. It was a deep-rooted thing. But I'll say the psychedelic experience might well have acted as a catalyst. Still, I just don't think he could deal with the vision of success and all the things that went with it." Our friend, textile designer, Wendy King was close to him for many years and declares he was the most talented person at anything that she ever knew.
Our scarf is officially endorsed by the Barrett estate and under licence to Perryscope Productions