With the assistance of art school friend Patrick Casey, McLaren converted the entire ground floor into the store and renamed it Let It Rock initially selling clothing (dead stock, military surplus) and objects he'd sourced.

[9][10] Let It Rock was patronised by teddy boys[11] and McLaren and Westwood's designs also appeared in such theatrical and cinematic productions such as The Rocky Horror Show and That'll Be The Day.

[citation needed] In January 1975, McLaren and Westwood designed red patent leather costumes for the New York Dolls and used a Soviet-style hammer and sickle motif for their stage shows in the US as an attempt to attract attention through provocation.

[14] His one-time associate Bernie Rhodes, who would later become the manager of the Clash, claimed he spotted a new frontman in another customer, John Lydon, then sporting green hair and torn clothes with the words "I hate" written on a Pink Floyd T-shirt above the band's name.

After Lydon joined, McLaren dubbed him "Johnny Rotten" and shortened the band's name to simply Sex Pistols, stating that he wanted to give the impression of "sexy young assassins".

The "Flower Duet" theme, taken from the French opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes, had already been used by composer Howard Blake[19] to accompany British Airways commercials since 1984.

In 1994, he recorded the concept album Paris, with appearances by such prominent French stars as actress Catherine Deneuve, musician Françoise Hardy, and fashion designer Sonia Rykiel.

The song heavily samples "She's Not There" by the Zombies, and uses Bessie Smith's "St. Louis Blues" by looping the phrase: "My man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea".

[20] In November 2005, a court in Angers, France, cleared McLaren of plagiarism accusations made by French audio engineer Benjamin Beduneau.

His hit song, "Double Dutch" was taken from "Puleng", by mbaqanga band "The Boyoyo Boys", as was the flip side "Zulus on a Time Bomb", from "Tsotsi".

[23] In 1984, McLaren turned away from record-making in favour of theatrical and film production, starting with a musical version of the Fans album to be staged off-Broadway with the impresario Joseph Papp.

[24] Simultaneously, McLaren worked with various collaborators on a film treatment which mixed the story of Beauty and the Beast with the life of the couturier Christian Dior.

Working from an office on the CBS lot and living in a house in the hills above the Hollywood Bowl, McLaren focused on Fans: The Musical and Fashion Beast, for which he commissioned British comic book writer Alan Moore to write a script, and developed a raft of properties including Heavy Metal Surfing Nazis, about post-apocalyptic turf wars among gangs on California's environmentally damaged beaches; The Rock'n'Roll Godfather, a biopic of Led Zeppelin's manager Peter Grant; and Wilde West, based on the notion of Oscar Wilde discovering the roots of rock'n'roll during his celebrated 1882 lecture tour of the US.

[26] In the early 90s McLaren returned to Europe and working out of London and Paris subsequently produced several film and television projects, starting with The Ghosts of Oxford Street, which he co-directed, wrote and starred in.

This musical history of London's Oxford Street was also narrated by McLaren and included performances by Happy Mondays, Tom Jones, Rebel MC, Kirsty MacColl, John Altman and Sinéad O'Connor.

[27] In 2000, McLaren scripted and performed in the six-part series Being Malcolm for the French digital youth channel Jimmy and continued to develop film properties, the most successful of which was the 2006 film Fast Food Nation, which he produced from Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, having appointed British producer Jeremy Thomas, with whom he had worked with on The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle, and director Richard Linklater to the project.

[29] With a range of policy proposals, from environmentally-sensitive traffic calming to providing public libraries with licences to serve alcohol, McLaren took to the hustings in protest at "the great political swindle of the mainstream parties who are plotting to make London expensive, oppressive and boring".

The series was due to be shown in August 2007 but was postponed owing to the death of fellow contestant actor Mike Reid shortly after filming was completed.

During filming McLaren was seen urinating into the harbour and loudly telling assembled inhabitants of the devout town, "Jesus is a sausage", at which point he was physically assaulted by a resident.

[42] The complete version of "Shallow 1–21" was given its full U.S. museum premiere in the Morris Gallery of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), in Philadelphia, from 24 October 2009 until 3 January 2010.

[44] In 2009, JRP Ringier published McLaren's book Musical Painting, which featured contributions from other visual artists including Damien Hirst and Jim Lambie.

"[45] At the time of his death, McLaren had recently finished a new film work entitled Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century, which was first shown at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK.

[47] In 2013, The Costume Institute of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition "Punk: From Chaos To Couture" included the section "The Couturier Situationists" dedicated to McLaren and Westwood.

[49] "Let It Rock: The Look of Music The Sound of Fashion" was curated by Young Kim and Paul Gorman and included sections focusing on each of the six retail outlets McLaren operated with Vivienne Westwood.

[50] Original clothing, photographs and ephemera were loaned by the Malcolm McLaren Estate archive and such collectors as British fashion designer Kim Jones and musician Marco Pirroni.

[51] British fashion writer Charlie Porter praised the curation, writing on his blog: "At the Malcolm McLaren show in Copenhagen, the hang of the garments is exceptional.

[53] "The main central space is dedicated to Malcolm McLaren, who embodies more than anyone the breaking open of perceptions of what constitutes an artist," wrote Magasin's Yves Aupetitallot in the exhibition introduction.

The exhibition also included contributions from musicians Daniel Johnston, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Alan Vega as well as artists who have engaged with music such as Alix Lambert and Takuji Kogo.

"[65] In a coffin sprayed with the slogan "Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die", McLaren's funeral was attended by Westwood, Sex Pistols bandmates Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, and celebrities such as Bob Geldof, Tracey Emin and Adam Ant.

Produced and directed by Jeremy Marre and presented by Alan Yentob, the programme included archive footage and contributions from Joe Corré, Young Kim and others.