Vivienne Westwood: from fashion designer to the ultimate influencer

Punk’s original riot girl has spat out her last safety pin and is demanding complete acceptance from the fashion establishment.

An image from the book Vivienne Westwood Catwalk. Picture: Michel Arnaud

Punk’s original riot “gurlll” – that’s girl – has spat out her last safety pin and is demanding complete acceptance from the fashion establishment. Receiving an OBE in 1992 and damehood in 2006 – both times, she proudly claimed to have worn no underwear – is not enough for British designer Vivienne Westwood, who at 80 years old is staking her claim as the ultimate influencer.

Turning Mother Punk into Coco Chanel’s successor is a plus-sized task considering Westwood’s most sensational stabs at the Zeitgeist. The colourful roles of consort to punk commodifier Malcolm McLaren in the 70s, snarling doyenne of the influential Sex boutique on London’s Kings Rd and most recently cheerleader for WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, have overshadowed her fashion output.

Vivienne Westwood, Catwalk

Further obscuring the underpinnings of Westwood’s creative credibility is her 1989 Tatler magazine cover as a convincing Margaret Thatcher, the famous 1993 footage of Naomi Campbell falling on the catwalk in her precarious platform shoes and “Dame Viv” flashing her buttocks to the paparazzi outside Buckingham Palace.

The release of Vivienne Westwood: Catwalk is a bold attempt at taking us beyond the headline hogging notoriety to convince us that the designer’s supposedly nonconformist creations have been determining what we’ve all been wearing for 40 years. It’s a perfectly timed accompaniment to Disney’s latest film Cruella, packed with Westwood references.

British fashion journalist Alexander Fury sets up the ambitious agenda in his introduction: “Vivienne Westwood’s contribution to fashion is unique, perhaps unparalleled. She is certainly the important fashion designer of the latter quarter of the 20th century.” Cue John Galliano, Commes des Garcons’ Rei Kawakubo, Celine’s Hedi Slimane and Donna Karan clutching at Tahitian pearls while Halston and Alexander McQueen roll in cashmere-lined caskets.

This gauntlet is aimed at Westwood’s detractors, including leading London Fashion institution Central Saint Martins, which never asked her to lecture and the likes of my former colleague at Australian Vogue who wrinkled her pert nose at the very suggestion of seeing a Westwood show at Paris fashion week in the late 2000s. “All of that tartan …,” she said, making the word tartan sound like vomit or polyester.

Revisiting Westwood’s shows through Catwalk’s playful assortment of runway photographs cataloguing the slow and often challenging rise of her label, it becomes clear that unlike many bold claims in fashion (see any book of quotes by Karl Lagerfeld), this one has legs to rival Jerry Hall.

Those corsets favoured by Kardashians and finessed by Dolce & Gabbana were revived by ­Westwood in 1991, conical bras as outerwear that ­became Jean Paul Gaultier’s signature in 1987 and emblematic of Madonna’s Blonde Ambition were scrawled across the Buffalo collection of 1982. Even the chaotic 1985 mini-crini show packed with Marie Antoinettes paved the way for Christian Lacroix’s era-defining pouffe skirts of the 80s.

Westwood may just be fashion’s most unlikely bridesmaid, watching other designers strut down the aisle towards acclaim with more polished and palatable executions of her concepts. Famed milliner Stephen Jones, who has famously worked for Dior, Raf Simons, Dries Van Noten and Westwood agrees.

“Our appreciation of every fashion designer today, how the fashion world is today, how we view fashion, is different because of Vivienne Westwood,” Jones told Another Magazine in 2017. “And that goes for John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Rei Kawakubo, Martin Margiela – everybody has been influenced by her.”

Poring over the joyous photographs of Westwood’s early shows with McLaren, filled with non-professional models smiling with an abandon rarely achieved on today’s runways, you can trace the designer’s influence.

Long before acknowledging diversity became compulsory for any label not wishing to be cancelled, Westwood’s shows were peppered with black and Asian models, along with men in outfits that defy pronouns. As Fury points out, Westwood knew how to blur genders for shock value but she was also deftly reflecting London’s progressive creative communities.

Over the decades Westwood’s scrappiness and raw appeal have evolved into a brand built on greatest hits, with former student, business partner and husband since 1993, Andreas Kronthaler, refining and juggling the label’s verbose language.

Where Chanel had her light tweeds, lion’s heads, camellias, sailor tops and interlocking C’s, Westwood and Kronthaler, now creative director, have bold tartans, pirate paraphernalia, corsets, platforms, heart-shaped lapels and overblown silhouettes.

Even the brand’s rebel spirit has become commodified, with penis shoes and protest T-shirts counteracting such commercial endeavours as designing the uniforms for Virgin Atlantic, dressing Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie for her aborted wedding in the Sex And The City movie, and collaborating with Burberry in 2018.

That rebel spirit came in handy when Westwood was accused of plagiarism in the autumn/winter 2017/18 Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood collection. T-shirts with the slogan “We do big sizes! 2XL 3XL 4XL 5XL!!!! We do very small sizes!!” had been lifted from designers Louise Gray and Rottingdean Bazaar.

A statement appeared on the brand’s social media in 2018 saying: “We are sorry. The use of your graphics on our T-shirt was only ever meant to be a celebration of your work. We got caught up in a last-minute frenzy and did not contact you to ask for your permission. We are truly sorry about this mistake and want to make it up to you.“ As Campbell’s 1993 runway collapse demonstrated decades earlier, Westwood can make any stumble seem cool.

Vivienne Westwood: Catwalk finishes with the spring/summer 2021 collection, marking the 40th anniversary of Westwood’s catwalk debut and her 50th in fashion. In the photographs the most powerful model is Westwood herself, embodying the contradiction of being the doyen of dishevelment.

While bowing down to Westwood would be a step too far, and almost impossible in some of her designs, this book is the salute she deserves rather than punk’s dirty middle finger.

Damien Woolnough is a former editor of vogue.com.au