G A Moore’s Menswear - An Eyesore or an Art Installation?

After Brian Moore retired, the years went by and the window display succumbed to time.   

In 1999,  a solar eclipse prompts 350 million people all over Europe to raise their eyes to the heavens whilst  all is silent in George Moore’s Menswear - except the eagle-eyed would notice little rivulets of condensation running down the windows.

In 2002 Princess Margaret dies, followed six weeks later by the Queen Mother...and in the window of George Moore’s Menswear a distinct film of white powdery mildew silently traces a damp finger across the Y-fronts that take centre stage. 

The years pass - the attacks on the World Trade Centre shock the world, Lehman Brothers collapses, there are earthquakes and tsunamis, and Michael Jackson dies.  Alongside these global tragedies we have our own personal moments of grief and joy.

Yet in George Moore’s Menswear’s window events are less dramatic, but relentless. Time becomes a living picture show as ties, handkerchiefs, sweaters that Val Doonican would have died for, become museum pieces. 

Fungus, mould, dust and microbes are slowly becoming the main attraction.  Even a picture of the pretty Susan  Hampshire  doesn’t stand a chance.   Her green-tinged photograph is almost Hamlet-like in its irony:  “...get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.”

The years pass by.  Gradually, people begin to stop and stare.  They ponder.  This ‘display’ is no longer a display of 1990s men’s underwear.  It’s a philosophical lesson about life.  As we stare at the Y-fronts,  ponder over the pants, meditate on the mould, we know that we must all come to this.  And before the quiet, confident decay  we ask ourselves, “What is all the fuss about?”. 

At the end of the day George Moore’s Menswear is a living meditation, an art installation about time, decay, and life too.  The shop has become a ‘character’, regularly visited by locals to see how things are going - how far the mould has advanced its inevitable march across the acrylics. (Talking of which, perhaps because they are mainly 'acrylic' or man-made fibre this could be the secret to the slow deterioration!)

George Moore’s Menswear has deteriorated quite a bit lately, in my opinion. I passed there the other day and it was long past its gentle mouldering stage. I could smell the damp when I put my nose to the door. It seems now to be shouting out one last defiant scream. The pace is quickening.

As if they know the end is nigh, journalists and other media types have been visiting George Moore's, taking photographs, writing articles and I think even television has been involved.  This is wonderful publicity for the street - because the neighbourhood is fighting very hard to revive this beautiful Edwardian street to its former glory.

In a way therefore, George Moore's Menswear's slow death is helping to keep the project alive!

One day George Moore's Menswear will have to be cleared out and we will all be sad. Because it is a beautiful, poignant, living/dying memorial to life, death, time - and Y-fronts.

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