Vivienne Westwood, the British fashion designer who helped develop punk as a style, an ethos and a movement in the 1970s with her extraordinary designs, died in London at the age of 81. A look at the iconic aesthetic of Westwood, the revolutionary and rebellious force of fashion.
Jess Cartner-Morley / Guardian
Dame Vivienne Westwood was a very British kind of genius. She was as down to earth as she was flamboyant, a former primary school teacher who came to shape punk culture.
Her clothes were bracingly modern – rips and safety pins, latex and androgyny – but steeped in a love of history. (She had a particular weakness for kilts and corsets.) Her clothes were worn by everyone from Theresa May to Chrissie Hynde, from Princess Eugenie to Pharrell Williams.
She was a rebel, but never without a cause, working tirelessly to raise awareness of the climate emergency many years before it was fashionable.
The last time I had lunch with Westwood, a couple of years ago, she wore a chic silk scarf at her throat, which she fastened with an Extinction Rebellion badge. She was immaculately made up, and ate pizza with a knife and fork, popping the daintiest pieces into her mouth so as not to smudge her bright coral lipstick.
I was supposed to be interviewing her about her fashion legacy, but she was not remotely interested in discussing clothes. Instead, she fixed me with a steady, birdlike gaze that brooked no interruption and talked passionately in her dry Derbyshire lilt about the inequity of modern capitalism, and of the threat posed by populist politicians to progress in protecting the environment.
Westwood’s heart had moved on from fashion in the last decade of her life, which she devoted to political causes. But fashion never fell out of love with Vivienne Westwood.
As one of the chief architects of punk, she was the fairy godmother of how every subculture since has used clothes to define its tribe. That streetwear has leapfrogged haute couture to become the leading edge of the global fashion industry owes a great deal to a seamstress from Glossop, Derbyshire who partnered with her boyfriend, Malcolm McLaren, to open a tiny shop on King’s Road in London in 1971.
The shop tore through two initial identities – Let It Rock sold Teddy Boy looks, while Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die pivoted to a rocker aesthetic – before it found fame as Sex in 1974.
Westwood’s genius was to capture the energy and iconoclastic spirit of punk, and give it a visual expression. Westwood’s clothes were an explainer to the world which showed what punk was. Bondage trousers were a two-fingered salute to polite society. Safety pins were a celebration of anarchy and flux. Costumey historical flourishes were a rejection of the establishment narrative that capitalism was the route to progress for everyone. The Sex Pistols showed the world what punk sounded like, Westwood showed the world what it looked like.
Amid the tortured souls of punk, Westwood carved out her own path, one that was full of humour, beauty and joy. Her clothes – like her worldview – were anti-establishment, but never nihilistic. They were deliberately off-kilter – partly by dint of being ahead of their time – but they were always elegant.
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