By Marie-Louise Gumuchian and Melissa Singer
Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the 1970s punk movement and became one of British fashion’s biggest names, has died aged 81.
Westwood’s eponymous fashion house announced her death on social media platforms, saying she died peacefully. A cause of death was not disclosed.
“Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. The world needs people like Vivienne to make a change for the better,” her fashion house said on Twitter.
Climate change, pollution and her support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were all fodder for protest T-shirts or banners carried by her models on the runway.
She dressed up as then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher for a magazine cover in 1989 and drove a white tank near the country home of a later British leader, David Cameron, to protest against fracking.
The rebel was inducted into Britain’s establishment in 1992 by Queen Elizabeth who awarded her the Order of the British Empire medal. But, ever keen to shock, Westwood turned up at Buckingham Palace without underwear - a fact she proved to photographers by a revealing twirl of her skirt.
Westwood protests against the extradition of Julian Assange to the US, outside London’s Old Bailey Court in 2020.Credit: AP
“The only reason I am in fashion is to destroy the word ‘conformity’,” Westwood said in her 2014 biography. “Nothing is interesting to me unless it’s got that element.”
In a post on Instagram, Westwood’s account said Westwood considered herself a Taoist and “continued to do the things she loved, up until the last moment, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better ... She led an amazing life. Her innovation and impact over the last 60 years has been immense and will continue into the future.”
Instantly recognisable with her orange or white hair, Westwood first made a name for herself in punk fashion in 1970s London, dressing the punk rock band that defined the genre.
Together with the Sex Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren, she defied the hippie trends of the time to sell rock’n’roll-inspired clothing. They moved on to torn outfits adorned with chains as well as latex and fetish pieces that they sold at their shop in London’s King’s Road variously called “Let It Rock”, “Sex” and “Seditionaries”, among other names.
They used prints of swastikas, naked breasts and, perhaps most well-known, an image of the queen with a safety pin through her lips. Favourite items included sleeveless black T-shirts, studded, with zips, safety pins or bleached chicken bones.
“There was no punk before me and Malcolm,” Westwood said in the biography. “And the other thing you should know about punk too: it was a total blast.“
International and local fashion figures, and other high-profile fans, have paid tribute to Westwood. Model and photographer Helena Christensen commented on Instagram that Westwood was “a true revolutionary, a true artist, activist, inspiration and icon”. Actor Kim Cattrall wrote: “I was blessed to meet her & wear her creations. I always loved she was Northern and never lost her grit ... A true original”.
Australian milliner Richard Nylon said that along with Thierry Mugler, who also died this year, Westwood was “the designer to look to when I started fashion school in 1984”, mainly for her “fierce, fearless and at times creatively chaotic approach to dress ... Westwood at her best was beyond fashion. It was magisterial apparel, ‘dress grand and be grand’,” he said.
Roger Leong, senior curator at the Powerhouse Museum, was working at that National Gallery of Australia in the 1990s at the time Westwood visited Australia.
“She was really charmed by the Australian bush and animals. What really enthralled her was our collection of fashion ... She spent hours in the basement of the NGA looking at the fashion collection down there. That’s her biggest legacy - that fashion is about ideas, about … changing the way we think.“
Former Vogue Australia editor-in-chief and author, Kirstie Clements, described Westwood as a “true rebel at heart” who had travelled the hard path of being a non-conformist in the fashion industry.
“Her boutique on the Kings Road was a landmark in the late 70’s and early 80’s , subversive and exciting. So much inventive and provocative fashion and music was coming out of London and Westwood, and her customer base, were at the epicentre. Her collections continued to challenge the status quo, deconstructing the romanticism of crinolines and bustles and Harris Tweeds and mixing them with the gritty realism of early punk. She was often dubbed eccentric, but her fashion was super-political. She celebrated ‘Britishness’ while also skewering elements of it.”
Alison Veness, visual director of Vogue Australia, attended her first Westwood show as a college student in London in the 1980s, and had the unique opportunity to take the designer as her date to Wimbledon one year.
Westwood at Wimbledon in 2006.Credit: Getty
“I picked her up in a shonky old stretch limo, 1970s I think, she loved it - we had lunch in this chic tent then we walked to centre court and she was really surrounded by people the whole way there,” Veness recalls, adding that Westwood brought tartan rugs to put over their knees in the stands. “People [from all walks of life] stopped her and wanted to take her photo. She was really humble but really surprised - she couldn’t believe people knew who she was. She didn’t believe her own hype - she just did it and got on with it.”
Designer Jenny Bannister, who started around the same time as Westwood, cried as she reflected on her “idol”.
“She was the person who made me travel and leave Melbourne to go to London in 1977 ... I never copied her but her ‘f–k you and go for it’ attitude and her anarchy [was a huge influence] … In this cruel world of fashion she really stood out, she broke all boundaries. I’d always gone out there, like her, to be overt, to get a reaction.“
Bannister said Westwood was pivotal in combating ageism in fashion. “[She] made it cool to be a designer when you’re old.”
Born Vivienne Isabel Swire on April 8, 1941 in the English Midlands town of Glossop, Westwood grew up at a time of rationing during and after World War 2.
A recycling mentality pervaded her work, and she repeatedly told fashionistas to “choose well” and “buy less”. From the late 1960s, she lived in a small flat in south London for some 30 years and cycled to work.
When she was a teenager, her parents, a greengrocer and a cotton weaver, moved the family to north London where she studied jewellery-making and silversmithing before re-training as a teacher.
Westwood and husband Andreas Kronthaler arrive for the funeral wake for Malcolm McLaren in 2010. Credit: AP
While she taught at a primary school, she met her first husband, Derek Westwood, marrying him in a homemade dress. Their son Ben was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966.
Now a single mother, Westwood was selling jewellery on London’s Portobello Road when she met art student McLaren who would go on to be her partner romantically and professionally. They had a son, Joe Corre, co-founder of lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.
After the Sex Pistols split, the two held their first catwalk show in 1981, presenting a “new romantic” look of African-style patterns, buccaneer trousers and sashes.
Westwood, by then in her forties, began to slowly forge her own path in fashion, eventually separating from McLaren in the early 1980s.
Often looking to history, her influential designs have included corsets, Harris Tweed suits and taffeta ballgowns.
Her 1985 “Mini-Crini” line introduced her short puffed skirt and a more fitted silhouette. Her sky-high platform shoes garnered worldwide attention in 1993 when model Naomi Campbell stumbled on the catwalk in a pair.
Vivienne Westwood
“My clothes have a story. They have an identity. They have character and a purpose,” Westwood said.
“That’s why they become classics. Because they keep on telling a story. They are still telling it.”
The Westwood brand flourished in the 1990s, with fashionistas flocking to her runway shows in Paris, and stores opening around the world selling her lines, accessories and perfumes.
She met her second husband, Andreas Kronthaler, teaching fashion in Vienna. They married in 1993 and he later became her creative partner.
Westwood used her public profile to champion issues including nuclear disarmament and to protest against anti-terrorism laws and government spending policies that hit the poor. She held a large “climate revolution” banner at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony in London, and frequently turned her models into catwalk eco-warriors.
“I’ve always had a political agenda,” Westwood told L’Officiel fashion magazine in 2018.
“I’ve used fashion to challenge the status quo.”
Reuters with AP