Red hair frames the distinguished face of a designer that has been in the business for over 40 years. Dame Vivienne Westwood is a legend.
She was described by John Fairchild, editor of Women’s Wear Daily, in 1989 as a ‘twinkling star, from which all fashion hangs by a golden thread’.
Her latest crusade to save the rainforest shows her love of nature and preserving beauty. She takes this philosophy through to her designs and asks her fans and followers to buy investment pieces and to go against the throwaway fashion era.
Strong views and opinions have always put her in the media spotlight, but Vivienne didn’t always have her own label, she was once a teacher, setting the rules in the classroom and has yet to stop in the fashion world.
“A good teacher is someone who fires people by their enthusiasms,” she once said. And this idea has never left her, as she now holds the post of Professor of Fashion at the Berliner Hochschule der Kunstestill (Berlin University of the Arts).
Highly regarded in such an outspoken and picky world, Westwood always created innovative designs, which others would admire and aspire to recreate.
“Vivienne Westwood stands for individuality and British eccentricity,” said Angela Long, history of fashion lecturer. “Her clothes are very well cut. I like the eccentric draping she does and her deconstructed skirts with bits pulled up and tags that attack the conventional. It’s fantastic”
Inspired by Christian Dior’s new look, launched just after the war in 1947, Westwood always remembered seeing a woman passing by wearing the latest collection. “This woman was walking from Tintwistle past our house down to Hollingsworth. I remember my mum saying, ‘She’s got the New Look on, come and have a look’. She thought it was horrible, with this long coat down to her ankles,” she said.
Vivienne Isabel Swire was born in Glossop, Derbyshire on 8 April 1941 but it was in 1965 when she met Malcolm McLaren that her future as a fashion designer could be envisaged.
McLaren was fascinated by clothes and used them to portray what he was thinking and feeling. “It’s the thing that makes my heart beat,” he once said.
Westwood and McLaren were the perfect working partnership and without them we may not have seen the outrageous punk designs in their first store, Let It Rock. Opening in 1971 on King’s Road, in London’s Chelsea District it was renamed twice before being closed down in 1974. The store was then refurbished and reappeared as the rebranded SEX boutique. At this time SEX was the only boutique of its kind in the world.
It offered those who liked to step outside the norm to wear clothes that set them apart from the rest. Black and striped t-shirts with rips, zips and cuts in them were the staples of the collection and those that wore them, wore them with pride.
“There will always be a place in fashion for a designer who breaks boundaries like Westwood. I am not sure whether what she designed was to do with youthful rebellion or simply jumping on the bandwagon but either way, it worked,” insists Angela Long.
Her collections today are still as magnificent, growing in stature and presence with every design. From Let It Rock to Anglomania, her brand and technique has got even more intense and so has her following.
“Vivienne has often looked back in history in order to move forward. Attending history museums she would recreate old fashion patterns, often Victorian but certainly very English,” explains Angela Long.
But her latest crusade to Save The Rainforest is something she is extremely passionate about despite her career in fashion and uses every opportunity to tell people how important climate change is. Her A/W show at London Fashion Week left people slightly puzzled as she came on to the catwalk and asked people not to buy too many clothes. Surely a designer would encourage people to buy a new collection? But Westwood knows that her clothes need no advertisement they sell themselves and so to her, it was the perfect opportunity to promote her latest venture.
With a love for the world we live in and a determination to achieve what she wants in life, there is no holding her back. Those that work for her have spoke in the past of her enthusiastic work ethic and encouragement but also of her softness and her likeability. It is this that makes her so special.
The British fashion Council says: “Dame Vivienne Westwood is an asset to British fashion. Her designs often resemble art rather than clothes but that is what makes her so alluring. From one collection to another she manages not only to come up with something new but also to set the standard to which other designers hope to reach. She is and always will be respected for her contribution to fashion.”
The golden thread that Fairchild spoke of is what she wraps around her work, and all her work turns to gold. With many collections still to come, there is no doubt she will continue to shock but more importantly, inspire.
