Mick Jagger and L'Wren Scott at The Ivy: a December night in Covent Garden, 2004
Covent Garden, London · December 2004
Introduction
I am Charles Pycraft, a London photographer. A week before Christmas 2004, just after midnight on 17 December, at the door of The Ivy in Covent Garden, I photographed Sir Mick Jagger coming out after dinner with a Christmas present under his arm. Fourteen seconds later, by my camera's clock, the designer L'Wren Scott followed him out. The two pictures on this page were taken at 00:24:44 and 00:24:58. I was five years into a career that ran from 1999 to 2014, and a rock star carrying a present out of The Ivy was a very good way to end a Thursday night.
This week the Rolling Stones released a new single, Who You Callin' Crazy, so it felt like the right moment to open this folder again.
The pavement
The Ivy sits in the heart of theatreland, and its door was a place where photographers like me waited in those years.
In the first frame Jagger is in a purple velvet jacket, a striped shirt and a long burgundy scarf, and he is carrying a parcel wrapped in gold paper with a pattern of stars and a gold ribbon. The original caption I filed that night lists "christmas present" among its keywords. In the second frame L'Wren Scott comes out of the same door in a dark patterned jacket with a deep red fur collar, holding a black velvet clutch bag. They are two separate frames, not one picture of the couple, and the whole moment was over in well under half a minute.
The kit, and why it looked like that
The file data shows a Nikon D2H, and the settings are the ones I used on doorways for years: 15mm, f/7.1, 1/200 of a second, ISO 400, flash fired, manual exposure. That is the same wide, close way of working I describe in my Zac Efron essay. At 15mm you are standing very near, the settings are made before the door opens, and there is no time to do anything except press the button.
The world that week
London was deep in Christmas pop. Band Aid 20's Do They Know It's Christmas? was at number one, the twentieth anniversary remake of the 1984 original, and it stayed there right through Christmas. Five days earlier, on Saturday 11 December, Steve Brookstein had won the very first series of The X Factor, beating the vocal group G4 in the final. Pop telly was having a very good December.
Where he was in 2004
On Monday of that week, 13 December, the Golden Globe nominations had been announced, and Old Habits Die Hard, the song Jagger wrote with Dave Stewart for the film Alfie, was on the list for best original song. It went on to win the award on 16 January 2005. The Stones' next studio album, A Bigger Bang, was still nine months away, released in the UK on 5 September 2005.
L'Wren Scott
L'Wren Scott was a fashion designer, and in her frame she is dressed for a December night out in style. She died in 2014, and I am glad to have this picture of her on a winter evening in London.
Where we are now
On Tuesday 20 October 2026 the Rolling Stones released Who You Callin' Crazy, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, with the jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine. It is the first new song from Foreign Tongues, Loose Lips, the deluxe edition of the band's album Foreign Tongues, which comes out on 27 November. Twenty two years after he carried that present out of The Ivy, he is still putting out new Stones records, and NME called this one playful and breezy.
My own work has moved a long way from that pavement. My photography years ran from 1999 to 2014, and the archive is now licensed through Backgrid UK. I work on business development and communications for Partisan.
The times on these files, 00:24:44 and 00:24:58, come from my camera's clock, and a camera clock is only a claim. If it was a few minutes out, nothing in the file would show it. Partisan records a file's fingerprint without seeing or keeping the document, gives a dated receipt, and shows a file is unchanged since it was recorded. It does not make a clock right. So I have kept to what the files show and to published reports.
The pictures
Two frames from a body of work I made in London between 1999 and 2014, taken fourteen seconds apart at the door of The Ivy.
To license these pictures, contact Backgrid UK Sales: backgrid_uksales@shutterstock.com. More at charlespycraft.co.uk/licensing.
Credit: Charlie Pycraft / BACKGRID. Licensing: Backgrid UK Sales, backgrid_uksales@shutterstock.com
