Derek McCormack
The Shithole Opry Collector’s Guide

Books ship April.

Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren were the designers of punk’s most famous fashions — what if they were also vampires? Welcome to The Shithole Opry Collector’s Guide, Derek McCormack’s devilish blend of art and fiction. This flashy new lookbook documents Hillbilly Heaven, a 1950s collection created by Westwood and McLaren for hillbilly vampires to wear to the Grand Ole Opry, the mother church of country music. From safety pin fangs to punk Minnie Pearl pearl necklaces, The Shithole Opry Collector’s Guide showcases all manner of star-studded shit from the collection, accompanied by a foreword by McLaren and a reprint of a review from a long-lost issue of Vampire Vogue magazine. The book is a riff on Westwood and McLaren’s work of the 1970s, which reimagined American rockabilly and rocker gear; it’s also a perversion of the clean-cut Christian facade of much country music. Most of all, it’s a parody of the way fashion designers pirate the past for inspiration, as it poses the question: What if the past stole from fashion the way fashion steals from the past? The Shithole Opry Collector’s Guide combines McCormack’s original artwork with his most original writing to date: the result is spectacular and sinister, sidesplitting and spine-chilling.

Pbk, 7.25 x 10.5 in. / 128 pgs / 250 color
U.S. $35.00 CAD $50.00 GBP £30.00
ISBN 9798993054704
Designed by Justin Carder
Published by Cushion Works and distributed worldwide by D.A.P.

Derek McCormack is a writer and artist who lives in Toronto. Among his previous books are the novels The Well-Dressed Wound   and Castle Faggot (Semiotext(e), 2015 and 2020), and a collection of essays about fashion and death titled Judy Blame’s Obituary (Pilot Press, 2022).
A related exhibition opens on April 23 at Cushion Works, with book events to follow at  Hauser and Wirth, Los Angeles (April 25) and Artists Space, New York (May 14).

What the critics are saying…

“Glamour is a sleazy business. It is the stuff of crusty wigs, dirty gems and paper tickets stained with sweat from the exhilaration of seeing your favorite rhinestone cowboy twangalang his hits onstage (and maybe show you his twangalang after?). True to the legacy of Westwood and McLaren, Derek McCormack’s toilet paper pearl necklaces, hangtag-fringed wig and excrement studded with semiprecious stones are at once disgusting and gorgeous to behold. Every word and page delighted and thrilled me.”
—Rachel Tashjian, fashion critic, CNN

“The images are mesmerizing — this is a lot of shit!”
—Andre Walker, fashion designer, king of New York