Paul Gorman

From 1978, Gorman worked on weekly news for trade publications and in 1983 won the Periodical Publishers Association award for campaigning journalism for a series of investigative food industry articles. In 1990 he was appointed west coast bureau chief of Screen International, based in Los Angeles. Between 1993 and 1998, Gorman was contributing editor at Music Week, reporting on executives and artists such as Madonna's manager Freddy DeMann, Creation Records founder Alan McGee and U2 manager Paul McGuinness. Between 1994 and 1999, Gorman was contributing editor at Music Business International. During this time he contributed regularly to magazines such as Mojo and conducted the first published interview with the Spice Girls. Having contributed to magazines and newspapers including GQ, The Daily Telegraph, Mojo and Vice, Gorman is a contributing editor at designer Jermaine Gallacher's interiors magazine TON.

In 1993 Gorman was recruited to a think tank run by Anthea Norman Taylor and her partner Brian Eno to create fund-raising ideas for the charity War Child. The think tank was made up of a handful of people included the late prominent music business PR Rob Partridge and produced a series of events which attracted much media attention and raised money and profile for the charity. These included 'Little Pieces From Big Stars', an exhibition and auction held at London's Flowers East gallery in October 1994 featuring works of art by musicians such as Billy Bragg, Charlie Watts, Paul McCartney, Billy Childish, Boy George and Shane MacGowan, and 'Pagan FunWear', a fashion catwalk show and auction held in June 1995 at the Saatchi Gallery featuring contributions from Bono, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Jarvis Cocker and many others.

In 2008, Gorman launched fashion label The Look Presents through Topman with three collections based on artist and designers featured in his book The Look: Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion: T-shirts by Wonder Workshop; T-shirts by Granny Takes a Trip founder Nigel Waymouth; and Priceless – a menswear range by Antony Price, designer for Roxy Music and Duran Duran.

In 2010 Gorman curated the exhibition Process: The Working Practices Of Barney Bubbles at London's Chelsea Space. The show attracted the largest attendance of any exhibition held at the gallery. In 2011 Gorman consulted on, and sourced material for, the British exhibitions Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990 and Snap Crackle & Pop: British Pop Art Meets The High Street In The Swinging Sixties. In September 2011, Gorman staged a dedicated Barney Bubbles exhibit at Mindful of Art, a group show at London's Old Vic Tunnels. In 2012 Gorman curated the exhibition Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter, presenting the work of the London fashion retailer whose boutiques provided clothing for a variety of performers including Fred Astaire, George Michael, The Clash, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Gorman consulted on and sourced material for British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age, which ran from March – August 2012 at the V&A. Also in 2012, Gorman curated The Past The Present & The Possible, a dedicated section presenting 300 artworks by Barney Bubbles as part of the group exhibition White Noise: Quand Le Graphisme Fait Du Bruit at Les Subsistances, Chaumont, Champagne Sud, France. Gorman consulted on and sourced material for Glam! The Performance of Style, an exhibition about the visual, social and creative aspects of the 70s glam rock genre which opened at Tate Liverpool in February 2013 and moved to Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle in June 2013 and Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz, Austria, from October 2013 to February 2014. In 2014, Gorman co-curated an exhibition about Malcolm McLaren's engagement in fashion with Young Kim of the Malcolm McLaren Estate. Staged as part of the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair, it was entitled Let It Rock: The Look Of Music The Sound Of Fashion. The exhibition was based around six sections dedicated to the retail outlets McLaren operated with Vivienne Westwood in the 1970s and 80s. The exhibition received a positive response from the media. Financial Times fashion editor Charlie Porter noted "the hang of the garments is exceptional" while prominent style blogger Susie Bubble greeted the exhibition as "an incredibly detailed and well-put together overview specifically about McLaren's fusion of music and fashion". In autumn 2014 Gorman was one of the curators of Art In Pop, an exhibition about the engagement between the worlds of art and popular music at the Centre National d'Art Contemporain gallery Magasin in Grenoble, France. Overseen by Magasin curator Yves Aupetitallot, Art In Pop included a large space curated by Gorman and Young Kim dedicated to McLaren's work and including clothing exhibits, a soundtrack and photographs of his student paintings executed in the late 60s. Marie France described it as "an invigorating exhibition not just to see but hear as well". In 2017-18, Gorman curated a series of exhibitions for home leisure specialist Sonos on The Face magazine and David Bowie at the company's stores in London, New York and Berlin. In 2018 Gorman curated Print! Tearing It Up, an exhibition at central London's Somerset House about the resurgence of independent magazines in the digital age. Gorman's archive of alternative and countercultural magazines was represented by around 40 exhibits in the exhibition Subscribe: Artists & Alternative Magazines, 1970-1995 at the Art Institute of Chicago from December 2021 to May 2022.

In October 2014, following the publication of the authorised biography Vivienne Westwood by the fashion designer and her co-author Ian Kelly, Gorman accused the authors and the publisher Picador of plagiarising substantial sections of material from his book The Look: Adventures In Rock & Pop Fashion. Gorman also described the Westwood biography as "sloppy" and "riddled with inaccuracies" and claimed it contained serious libels against two individuals, one of whom was pronounced to be dead by Westwood when in fact the individual was alive and practising as a therapist in west London. Picador publisher Paul Baggaley told The Bookseller: "We always take very seriously any errors that are brought to our attention and, where appropriate, correct them." Subsequently, the paperback edition included 27 new citations to Gorman's book.

• Print! Tearing It Up (Somerset House 2018). • Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges: Joining the dots from the Situationist International to Malcolm McLaren (ed. John Hansard Gallery 2015). • Lloyd Johnson: The Modern Outfitter (Chelsea Space 2012). • Process: The Working Practices of Barney Bubbles (Chelsea Space 2010).

• London Calling: The Clash In The Capital (Herb Lester Associates 2026). • Down The Road Apiece: The Rolling Stones' London 1962-71 (Herb Lester Associates 2025). • David Bowie's London (Herb Lester Associates 2025). • Situation Vacant: Sex Pistols & Malcolm McLaren in London (Herb Lester Associates 2021). • Punk London: In The City 1975-78 (Herb Lester Associates 2016). • The Look Of London (Herb Lester Associates 2012).