MALCOLM MCLAREN was a visionary of pop culture and a pop cultural icon for over thirty years. An artist in the most post-modern sense of the word, working in every conceivable artistic and intellectual medium (fashion, music, film, theatre, literature, politics, advertising, performance), time and time again, he was at the forefront.  His genius lay in the ability to anticipate major cultural movements and to engage with them artistically in unexpected and explosive ways. 

He is probably best recognized for his lifelong obsession of melding fashion with music which he termed: “the look of music and the sound of fashion;” the apotheosis of which was punk.  Pretty much anyone punk in the UK is connected to McLaren. 

Born in London, England in 1946, and raised by his maternal family of Jewish diamond dealers and tailors (his grandfather was a master tailor on Savile Row and his mother owned a dress factory called Eve Edwards in East London), he studied fine art at a succession of London art schools (Chelsea, Croydon, Goldsmiths, Harrow, St. Martins…) before embarking on his career in 1971 when he opened Let It Rock, the first of his legendary shops at 430 King’s Road, London with art school friends.  

The shop was a Gesamtkunstwerk (and possibly the world’s first pop up shop) which McLaren reinvented again and again at the same address for ten years: Let it Rock, Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, Sex, Seditionaries, Worlds End (as it remains to this day) and finally at St. Christopher’s Place, Nostalgia of Mud.  For each new incarnation of the shop, McLaren designed and curated every aspect of it: overall concept and philosophy, the shop’s exterior and interior, graphics, music, clothing and in due course, even the denizens and players.  

As the shop flourished, he brought in his girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood, to help.  With Westwood as his partner, he created fashion that would dress the punk generation and inspire legions of fashion designers.  

Alongside the fashion, McLaren founded, managed and art directed the iconic band, the Sex Pistols and went on to work with such artists as Boy George, Adam Ant and Bow Wow Wow, before becoming a recording artist in his own right.  His film of the Sex Pistols, The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle is a Punk classic today.  McLaren’s solo albums Duck Rock (1981), Fans (1984), Waltz Darling (1989) and Paris (1993) were major breakthroughs of musical genres: Hip Hop, Opera & R&B, Lounge music, etc.  In 2004, Quentin Tarantino featured McLaren’s track, “About Her” for his film, Kill Bill2.

In the mid-80s, McLaren worked in Hollywood as a development executive for Columbia Pictures and Steven Spielberg for four years before returning to Europe.  He continued to work in all the various mediums including composing the British Airways theme tune (still used today) and the Paris album, conceiving and producing the film, Fast Food Nation (based on Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book), award winning TV programs (The Ghosts of Oxford Street, Shoppertainment), authoring and voicing “radio movies” (Malcolm McLaren’s Musical Map of London, Malcolm McLaren’s Musical Map of Los Angeles), performing (The Baron, Celebrity Big Brother, Edinburgh Festival), writing (The New Yorker, The New Statesman, Condé Nast Traveler, Wired, The New York Times, Financial Times weekend Diary column), consulting (Ogilvy & Mather, Saatchi & Saatchi, Phillips de Pury), designing fashion for children (Fashionbeast capsule collection for Yoox), lecturing and even running in the first London Mayoral race in 1999, garnering 10% of the popular vote.  

Toward the end of his life, McLaren returned to his roots as a visual artist.  In June 2008 at Art Basel 39, McLaren premiered Shallow 1-21, a series of twenty-one “Musical Paintings”—short films set around music that he composed.  Shallow 1-21 was included in a special exhibition as part of Art Basel Projects, and thereafter shown in various art institutions and galleries.  In early 2010, less than two months before his death, McLaren finished a new set of projections entitled, Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century, an early version of which was screened at the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art in Newcastle, UK.  The completed version premiered at the Swiss Institute in New York in February 2010.

He died on April 8, 2020 of mesothelioma in Bellinzona, Switzerland.

The sole heir and executor of his estate is his girlfriend and business partner of the last twelve years of his life, Young Kim.