Nigel Waymouth

Acclaimed designer and portrait artist, Nigel Waymouth’s quintessential pop posters are synonymous with the summer of love era. He co-founded the original rock-chic boutique, Granny Takes a Trip, and together with Guy Sangster Adams will be doing a special event in the Walled Garden about the retro boutique.

Back in the 1960s, Nigel partnered with Sheila Cohen and John Pearse to launch Granny Takes a Trip. Nigel was responsible for the ever-changing shop front, designed the interior and also some of the early clothes. Taking an unusual approach to fashion, the clothes were often designed using curtain and upholstery fabrics. The store became a hotbed of creativity, with Paul Smith as a regular customer and Salman Rushdie living upstairs.

During this time Nigel teamed up with fellow artist, Michael English, under the name Hapshash and the Coloured Coat and designed many of the classic pop posters of the era. Most of the originals can be found in the V&A, which hosted a retrospective of the Hapshash and the Coloured Coat work in 2000. Tate Liverpool also included many of these designs in their Summer of Love Psychedelic Art, 1967 exhibition (2005) which later showed in Brooklyn in 2007.

Nigel now pursues a career as a painter and portraitist. His work has been exhibited in London and Los Angeles and he’s been included in the Royal Society of Portrait Painters group show, as well as completing private commissions for Rupert Murdoch, The Duchess of York, Tom Hanks, Eric Idle, Dominick Dunne, Dame Diana Rigg and Peter Morton.

VIDEO:

Watch a film about Granny Takes a Trip: