Dedicated follower of fashion

Dylan Jones has been in the front row for every shift in London's cultural scene. And he's got the tickets, posters and t-shirts to prove it. Here he describes why he is saying goodbye to some of his favourite possessions

I started collecting by accident. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a terrible hoarder, loathed to throw away anything that I consider meaningful.

Just a quick scan around my study throws up a wealth of memories: my Alice Cooper scrapbook from 1972, my copies of Goal! magazine, my Beatles wig (bought from one of the many Record and Tape Machine shops in the days when they seemed to have colonised the entire postcode), toy cars (for years I had a miniature Batmobile from the original TV series, until it was inevitably lost), my Captain Black figurine from Gerry Anderson’s Captain Scarlet series, a talking Action Man who stopped talking almost immediately after my jealous brother drowned him in the bath.

Over the years I’ve collected everything, a lot of which I still have, shoved into dozens and dozens of shoeboxes, stored under the stairs, and plastered all over my walls. So – deep breath – I’ve got hundreds of club invitations (starting with invites for the New Romantic night at St. Moritz and Chris Sullivan’s original Mayhem warehouse parties, to Acid House flyers via tickets for Club For Heroes, the Wag Club, Do-Do’s, White Trash, Total Fashion Victim, Taboo, the Camden Palace and dozens more), drawers full of ticket stubs from gigs (the Clash at Hammersmith Palais, Trouble Funk at the Town and Country Club, Live Aid), fashion shows, parties, and fanzines. Plus, I’ve got hundreds of 7” singles, albums, CDs, cassette tapes, posters, promotional giveaways, boxed sets, first editions, suits, shoes, shirts, ties, cufflinks, sunglasses and the designer detritus of a life spent in the lifestyle industries.

And then there is the stuff I’ve put on my walls, walls which no longer have any space for anything else. My wife has often complained that I spend more time with my framer – Jonathan – than I do with her, as most weekends I have found time to disappear to his studio to give him something else to work on.

“My wife has often complained that I spend more time with my framer – Jonathan – than I do with her”

I’ve never really considered what I own to be a collection, although I suppose by dint of what I have collected, I suppose it is very particular, a collection which is driven by my obsession with Pop Art as well as contemporary British work, and lots of photography, specifically Peter Blake, Jamie Reid, David Bailey, Terry O’Neill, Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin, Rob & Nick Carter, Maryam Eisler, Philip Colbert and Harland Miller.

My work has afforded me amazing access to extraordinary people and places, and along the way I have collected things which reflect that. My collection is a labour of love, which I suppose has inadvertently become a reflection of modern British culture over the last 50 years. Having worked at i-D, The Face, Arena, The Observer, The Sunday Times, GQ and The Evening Standard, I feel I’ve been under the bonnet of British culture for quite some time, and it’s been rewarding to be able to create my own cultural bubble. 

“I’ve been under the bonnet of British culture for quite some time, and it’s been rewarding to be able to create my own cultural bubble”

I thought long and hard about the things in this auction. Everything included has at one point or another been cherished, but in the end, you can’t have everything - after all, as the American comedian Steven Wright once said, “Where would you keep it?”

These Foolish Things: A Memoir (2024) by Dylan Jones is now available in paperback

Highlights of the Dylan Jones Collection will star in Bonhams' British. Cool. sale

David Hockney

Several years ago, one of my best friends bought me the original Helmut Newton 'Sumo', the massive book of his work published by Taschen, which sat proudly in my living room until I got worried that my small daughters might start looking at some of the racier photographs. I’ve still got it and remain amazed at the ingenuity of it all. I was intrigued by the David Hockney edition, but having bought it, never unwrapped it. I know it’s beautiful, but I simply don’t have the space for it anymore. In fact, I never have.

Justin de Villeneuve

At the time, Justin was still looking after Twiggy. Bowie wanted to meet Twiggy, and they wanted to meet him so Justin arranged for them to see each other. Bowie really wanted to be on the cover of Vogue, as it was one of the few magazine covers he hadn’t appeared on. Justin knew Bea Miller the editor and Barney Wan the art director, so he called them up and off they went. Justin wasn’t strictly a photographer, in fact at that time he wasn’t a photographer at all, but he’d seen a lot of snappers take pictures of Twiggy, and he thought it couldn’t actually be that difficult. And it wasn’t. A few days after the shoot Bowie called up and asked if he could use it for his album cover. Justin asked him how much it was going to sell, and Bowie thought about it for a while and then said, “Well, probably about a million.” So he let him have the pictures. Vogue were furious, and no one from the magazine would ever talk to Justin again.

David Bowie

In 2017 I published my second book on Bowie, A Life, and it received so much attention, that I started being inundated with people wanting to connect, mainly because they wanted to ask me various questions about him, wanting to know what he felt about particular issues (I always replied saying I wouldn’t be so audacious to speak on his behalf, and so I had no idea). I was also sent dozens of Bowie artefacts, paintings and prints, and spent a ridiculous amount of time and money buying my own. In fact, there are probably more images of Bowie in my house than there are of my children.

Harry Brown

This was a rather great British vigilante movie produced by a friend of mine, Kris Thykier, who co-hosted a private dinner and screening with me and its star, Michael Caine, some weeks before it came out. At the dinner after the screening, Michael stood up to say a few words and was immediately besieged by questions from the other guests. Like the gentleman he is, he answered questions for over 40 minutes before saying, incredibly elegantly, “Can I sit down now?”

Jamie Reid

The punk onslaught of the seventies was driven as much by its visuals as it was the music, and this principally lies at the feet of the mighty Jamie Reid. Having collected Jamie’s work since the late 1970s, I’ve always kept an eye out for new editions, and work of his that didn’t always reach the mainstream art world. The Putin print was one I wanted so much I ended up buying two copies, while the other was bought at a fair in London (again, I bought two). For a while I started buying in bulk as I wanted a backup, but this way madness lies. 

Peter Blake

Peter is someone else whose work I’ve collected for some time. He is a genuine British hero, whose work I think is still undervalued. In my eyes he is easily the equal of Hockney, if not slightly more important. I love his paintings, screenprints, collages and drawings, and in fact I’ve probably got more of his paintings and prints than any other artist. In the eighties, he designed a book jacket for me, while I’ve gone out of my way to work with him on every title I’ve worked on. His studio in Hammersmith is one of the most inspirational workplaces I’ve ever seen, an Aladdin’s cave of wonder. As a journalist, it really helped me get under his skin and discover his own inspirations. He is a genuinely great Briton.

Mick Rock

There was a period when Mick had such great access to David Bowie, during a period in which he was taking so much care with his image, that almost every picture he took became iconic. I interviewed him many times, and he once told me that “David was very charming, and very friendly. It was never difficult being around David. He was amazingly self-disciplined, and he was always very careful in how he approached things. He didn’t micro-manage, but he liked to surround himself with people he could trust, who knew what they were doing, even if they weren’t sure they could do it themselves. That’s sort of what happened to me, as he gave me the confidence to just go for it. Somehow, I was at the right place at the right time with the right instincts.”

Jeremy Deller

He’s been called a Pied Piper of popular culture, and a social surrealist, although he prefers “an instigator of social interventions”. Regardless, I love his work. I also love the fact that he once had a show in his parents’ house when they went on holiday. They only found out about it ten years later. Another of my favourites is his silkscreen on plexi, “You treat this place like a hotel.”

Damien Hirst

My study is full of skulls, dozens and dozens of them. I have sheep skulls found on the Welsh mountains, wildlife skulls bought in Zambia, South Africa and Kenya, and coffins full of painted Mexican skulls. I recently visited Mexico City, where I replenished my collections with an array of extraordinary skulls bought from street markets. Widely known as calaveras, in Mexico they are often made of cane sugar, decorated with coloured foil, icing, beads, and feathers. Mine are mostly made from clay. I love working with Damien, and we collaborated on GQ’s 25^th anniversary issue, in which he turned Rihanna into Medusa. Genius.

Paula Rego

I never met her, but I’ve loved her since I studied her work at St. Martin’s, where I studied in the late seventies, having already done a Foundation Course at Chelsea School of Art in 1977. In 1989, she became the second artist-in-residence, after the scheme re-started, at the National Gallery in London, and I have no reasonable excuse for not endeavouring to meet her.

The Beatles

I bought a copy of the Alan Aldridge Beatles jigsaw with my pocket money when I was about ten. I eventually lost it, but bought a replacement from an antique shop near Bond Street station about 25 years ago. I remember making the jigsaw when I was a boy, but didn’t actually empty the box until Covid happened five years ago. It took me three days to complete it, on and off (it had all the pieces), reminding me how much enjoyment it had given me when I was young (the most difficult bits were the edges, which all looked like jungle). I enjoyed it so much that I promptly sent off for some other Beatles jigsaws, including the Abbey Road one. But they weren’t as much fun, or as iconic as this one. The wig I bought about 30 years ago, from a specialist shop in West London. Cost me a small fortune.

Vivienne Westwood

Back in the eighties I had a dozen original Swatches, including several transparent 'jellies', a couple of Keith Harings and some of the early constructivist designs. I sold them all a few years ago but kept this back as I liked the Orb so much (I think it’s one of the most original things she ever designed). My watch collection used to be ridiculous, but I only have a few left that I use. This, like most Swatches, I didn’t buy one to wear. You only bought a Swatch to stare at it lovingly in its case. That was the eighties for you.

A Vivienne Westwood 'Pop Swatch'. Estimate: £400-600

Fashion highlights from the Dylan Jones Collection will feature in the Men's Fashion sale

Louis Vuitton cases

For a while I have to admit they became something of an addiction. Each season LV would produce another edition, and they were often hard to resist. After a while I thought I was turning into Elton John, as my house started resembling an actual Louis Vuitton shop. Vuitton have mastered the impossible, by remaining exclusive while selling in huge numbers. They are a phenomenally chic brand, and yet have the ability to open these vast global emporiums that always break sales targets when they open. In this respect they are the perfect luxury brand. Which is probably why I bought so many of their suitcases.

Suits

When I ran GQ, I would be out three, sometimes four, sometimes five nights a week, and I was always ambassadorial in my approach. I would invariably wear a suit, with a pocket square, and chisel-toed, sometimes patent, shoes (often by Cleverley). I wanted to look like a dandy, and felt I needed to dress like one. Along with Caroline Rush, the former CEO of the British Fashion Council, I started the men’s version of London Fashion Week, building a platform for our young designers, celebrating Savile Row and encouraging the cream of international fashion talent – including Tom Ford, Tommy Hilfiger, Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana – to show in London. Every six months we would be visited by hundreds of international press visiting London for the shows, and I would invariantly be interviewed by someone who wanted to know what my “style regime” was. My answer was always the same: “I wake up, put on a blue suit, and walk to work.”

Dunhill fountain pen

I always had a lot of thank you letters to write, and the most appropriate way to do this was to use a fountain pen by Mont Blanc or Dunhill. I lost count of the number of pens I bought, most of which I still have. Some, like this, have never been used. If I need to write any letters of thanks at the end of this auction, I’ll have to use one of my hardy perennials. Either that or a Sharpie.

Cufflinks

When I was at GQ I tended to dress like an armour-plated eighties investment banker, particularly if I was seeing advertisers that day. I loved the commercial side of the business – still do (I’m good at it), but I always wanted to dress as though I was going into battle. I never wanted to be the second-best dressed man in the room. Ever.