British designer Vivienne Westwood (born 1941) is often credited with being the creator of "punk fashions, " among other trend-setting styles.
Vivienne Westwood was born in Tinwhistle, England, in 1941. Following just one term at the Harrow Art School, Westwood left and trained to become a primary school teacher. She earned her living teaching until she crossed paths with Malcolm McLaren, the man behind the punk rock group The Sex Pistols.
Under McLaren's guidance and influence, Westwood slid into the world of youthful fashion, which reflected the turmoil of those rebellious times. She was responsible for mirroring and outfitting the social movements characterized by the growing segments of British population known as the Teddy Boys, Rockers, and, finally, the Punks.
In 1971 the duo began making drastic changes in British style with a series of shops located at 430 Kings Road. The first was Let It Rock, a 1950s revival boutique, coinciding with the Teddy Boys movement and zoot suits. The store also sold 1950s memorabilia and rock music. Then in 1972 the shop was changed to Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, a name stolen from a biker's jacket. In 1974 Westwood and McLaren opened their infamous Sex Shop, selling bondage and fetish fashions of rubber and leather. Rock star Adam Ant has commented that, "Sex was one of the all-time greatest shops in history."
The concept of satirical style and subversive chic was foremost in Westwood and McLaren's minds. Both were once prosecuted for wearing T-shirts that depicted a homosexual cowboy.
In 1975 they opened Seditionaries, the first authentic punk clothing shop in London. Jon Savage, a Face magazine writer, then called their look "the only modern look of the '70s." The shop translated the hard edges of street style in an interior filled with photos of a bombed-out, war-torn London. When her Pirate collection coincided with the New Romantic fashion movement in London, the shop changed focus again, becoming Worlds End, with a bizarre fantasy interior of slate tiles, cuckoo clocks, and sloping floors. Her next collection was dubbed Clothes for Heros, and her patrons included the soon-to-be-famous Boy George.
Westwood's next three collections, Savage (1981) and Hobo and Buffalo (both in 1982), were highly innovative, and her wildly staged shows (models square dancing to Appalachian music covered with mud makeup) affected the show styles of other designers.
Soon after, another shop opened in London's fashionable West End with a 3-D map of Africa. It was called Nostalgia of Mud, the name a slam of middle-class longings for low-life seedy chic. Westwood's clothing at this time consisted of rags tangled in hair, bras worn outside disheveled clothing, and ripped and torn T-shirts.
In 1983 Westwood's alliance with McLaren came to an explosive and painful end. Without his tutelage and often overbearing guidance, Westwood began to extend her design range. The Witches Collection (summer of 1983), the first completely on her own, was a highly successful showing of oddly shaped, cut, and proportioned garments (the neckline often found under the arm) based on a book about voodoo she had read. Her clothing was cut, not on a board, but on the body, pulling, draping, and then, finally, cutting.
After several seasons' absence, Westwood came back strong with her fall 1985 collection centered on the bubble-shaped hooped skirt with thigh-high stockings. Westwood's Mini-Crinis caused a shift in silhouette that was swiftly picked up, first by Jean Paul Gaultier, then by almost every other designer in Europe and New York. In fact, 1986 was dubbed by fashion seers as The Year That Went Pouf, and all because of Vivienne Westwood. Through the 1990s Westwood continued to reign as Queen of Punk Fashion. She scandalized and outraged the world of fashion with bare-breasted models and bizarre creations at yearly shows in Paris and other centers of design. A childhood friend, Fred Vermorel, wrote a biography of Westwood in 1996.
Westwood and McLaren can be justified in claiming that they invented "punk fashions, " and, despite her rebellious nature, the fashion establishment recognized her work as important. Her Pirate outfit was the centerpiece of the modern dress collection in London's Victoria & Albert Museum. Decadent, depraved, and demented are all words that describe the fashions of Vivienne Westwood. She once said of her designs, "My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor."
Further Reading
Additional information on designers and fashions can be found in the Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion (1988), McDowell's Directory of 20th Century Fashion (1987), and Catherine McDermott's Street Style (1987). See also Andrew Edelstein's The Pop Sixties (1985), Alison Lurie's The Language of Clothes (1983), and Melissa Sones' Getting into Fashion (1984). A biography was written in 1996, Fred Vermorel, Vivienne Westwood: Fashion, Perversity and the Sixties Laid Bare. Articles and reviews of fashion shows include "Marion Hume, Portrait of a Former Punk, " Vogue (September, 1994) and Amy M. Spindler, "Treating History with a Sense of Pride, " New York Times (March 17, 1997).
Born: Vivienne Isabel Swire in Glossop, Derbyshire, 8 April 1941.
Education: Studied one term at Harrow Art School, then trained as a teacher.
Family: Children: Ben, Joseph.
Career: Taught school before working as designer, from circa 1971; with partner Malcolm McLaren, proprietor of boutique variously named Let It Rock, 1971, Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, 1972, Sex, 1974, Seditionaries, 1977, and World's End, from 1980; second shop, Nostalgia of Mud, opened, 1982; Mayfair shop opened, 1990; first showed under own name, 1982; taught at Academy of Applied Arts, Vienna, 1989-91; first full menswear collection launched, 1990; opened Tokyo shop, 1996; introduced denim line, Anglomania, 1997; fragrances include Boudoir, 1998; and Boudoir, 2000.
Exhibitions: Retrospective, Galerie Buchholz & Schipper, Cologne, 1991; retrospective, Bordeaux, 1992; Vivienne Westwood: The Collection of Romilly McAlpine, Museum of London, 2000.
Awards: British Designer of the Year award, 1990, 1991; Order of the British Empire (OBE), 1992; Fashion Group International awards, 1996.
Address: Unit 3, Old School House, The Lanterns, Bridge Lane, Battersea, London SW11 3AD, England.
Vivienne Westwood's clothes have been described as perverse, irrelevant, and unwearable. Her creations have also been described as brilliant, subversive, and incredibly influential. She is unquestionably among the most important fashion designers of the late 20th century and beyond
Westwood will go down in history as the fashion designer most closely associated with punks, the youth subculture that developed in England in the 1970s. Although her influence extends far beyond the era, Westwood's relationship with the punk subculture is critically important to an understanding of her style. Just as the mods and hippies had developed their own styles of dress and music, so did the punks. Yet while the hippies extolled love and peace, the punks emphasized sex and violence. Punk was about nihilism, blankness and chaos, and sexual deviancy, especially sadomasochism and fetishism. The classic punk style featured safety pins piercing cheeks or lips, spiky hairstyles, and deliberately revolting clothes, which often appropriated the illicit paraphernalia of pornography.
Westwood captured the essence of confrontational antifashion long before other designers recognized the subversive power of punk style. In the 1970s Westwood and her partner Malcolm McLaren had a shop in London successively named Let It Rock (1971), Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die (1972), Sex (1974), and Seditionaries (1977). In the beginning the emphasis was on a 1950s-revival look derived from the delinquent styles of 1950s youth culture. In 1972 the shop was renamed after the slogan on a biker's leather jacket, heralding the new brutalism that would soon spread throughout both street fashion and high fashion. Black leather evoked not only antisocial bikers like the Hell's Angels, but also sadomasochistic sex, which was then widely regarded as "the last taboo."
Westwood's Bondage collection of 1976 was particularly important. Working primarily in black, especially black leather and rubber, she designed clothes that were studded, buckled, strapped, chained, and zippered. Westwood talked to people who were into sadomasochistic sex and researched the "equipment" they used. "I had to ask myself, why this extreme form of dress? Not that I strapped myself up and had sex like that. But on the other hand I also didn't want to liberally understand why people did it. I wanted to get hold of those extreme articles of clothing and feel what it was like to wear them." Taken from the hidden sexual subculture that spawned it and flaunted it on the street, bondage fashion began to take on a new range of meanings. "The bondage clothes were ostensibly restricting," she said, "but when you put them on they gave you a feeling of freedom."
Sex was "one of the all-time greatest shops in history," recalled pop star Adam Ant. The shop sign was in padded pink letters and the window was covered, except for a small opening, through which one could peep and see items like pornographic t-shirts. Westwood, in fact, was prosecuted and convicted for selling a t-shirt depicting two cowboys with exposed penises. Other shirts referred to child molesting and rape, or bore aggressive slogans like "Destroy" superimposed over a swastika and an image of the Queen.
Sex was implicitly political for Westwood; when she renamed the shop Seditionaries, it was to show "the necessity to seduce people into revolt." She insisted sex was fashion, and deliberately torn clothing was inspired by old movie stills. She also launched the fashion for underwear as outerwear, showing bras worn over dresses. From the beginning she exploited the erotic potential of extreme shoe fashions, from leopard-print stiletto-heeled pumps to towering platform shoes and boots with multiple straps and buckles.
"When we finished punk rock we started looking at other cultures," recalled Westwood. "Up till then we'd only been concerned with emotionally charged rebellious English youth movements…. We looked at all the cults that we felt had this power." The result was the Pirates Collection of 1981, which heralded the beginning of the New Romantics Movement. The Pirates Collection utilized historical revivalism, 18th-century shirts and hats, rather than fetishism, but like the sexual deviant, the pirate also evoked the mystique of the romantic rebel as outcast and criminal. Meanwhile, in 1980 the shop was renamed World's End, and in 1981 Westwood began to show her collections in Paris, finally recognized internationally as a major designer.
Like pirates and highwaymen, Westwood and McLaren wanted "to plunder the world of its ideas." The Savages Collection (1982) showed Westwood gravitating toward a tribal look—the name was deliberately offensive and shocking—and the clothes oversized, in rough fabrics, and with exposed seams. Subsequent collections, like Buffalo, Hoboes, Witches, and Punkature, continued Westwood's postmodern collage of disparate objects and images.
In 1985 Westwood launched her "mini-crini," a short hooped skirt inspired by the Victorian crinoline, and styled with a tailored jacket and platform shoes. "I take something from the past which has a sort of vitality that has never been exploited—like the crinoline," she said. Westwood insisted that "there was never a fashion invented that was more sexy, especially in the big Victorian form." She also revived the corset, another much maligned item of Victoriana—and an icon of fetish fashion. Certainly her corsets and crinolines forced people to reexplore the meaning of controversial fashions. As she moved into the late 1980s and 1990s, Westwood continued to transgress boundaries, not least by rejecting her earlier faith in antiestablishment style in favor of a subversive take on power dressing. Like "Miss Marple on acid," Westwood appropriated twinsets and tweeds, and even the traditional symbols of royal authority.
As the century drew to a close, Westwood still delighted in taking the fashion world to task. While her contemporaries and a crop of new designers were concentrating on airy, fluid, feminine ensembles, Westwood took the opposite tack with revealingly tight, clinging dresses with bawdy drawings. She expanded her reach with her first store outside the UK, in Tokyo in 1996, then launched a new denim collection, Anglomania, in 1997. Her own fragrances followed, with Boudoir in 1998 and Libertine in 2000. By the time Westwood opened a flagship store in New York, appropriately located in SoHo, she already had 20 in Asia, five in England, and another slated for Los Angeles.
Though the business part of her growing empire isn't nearly as fun as designing, the Vivienne Westwood name had been attracting new generations, even cyber shoppers. Westwood accessories and her fragrances sell at various Internet sites, and the irreverent fashion queen even launched her own website. Talking with Women's WearDaily (27 November 2000), she mused on her recognition. "Most people have never seen my clothes," she said, "but they've heard of me." Indeed.
Publications
By Westwood:
Books
Vivienne Westwood: A London Fashion, with Romilly McAlpine, London, 2000.
Articles
"Youth: Style and Fashion, Opinion," in the Observer (London), 10 February 1985.
"Paris, Punk and Beyond," in Blitz (London), May 1986.
"Pursuing an Image Without Any Taste," in the Independent (London), 9 September 1989.
"My Decade: Vivienne Westwood," in the Sunday Correspondent Magazine (London), 19 November 1989.
"Vivienne Westwood Writes…," in the Independent, 2 December 1994.
On Westwood:
Books
Polhemus, Ted, Fashion and Anti-Fashion, London, 1978.
McDermott, Catherine, Street Style: British Design in the 1980s, London, 1987.
Howell, Georgina, Sultans of Style: 30 Years of Fashion and Passion 1960-1990, London, 1990.
Steele, Valerie, Women of Fashion: Twentieth Century Designers, New York, 1991.
Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, Third Edition, New York, 1996.
Vermoral, Fred, Fashion & Perversity: A Life of Vivienne Westwood and the Sixties Laid Bare, Woodstock, New York & London, 1996.
Dame Vivienne Westwood, DBE, RDI (born 8 April 1941) is a British fashion designer largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.[1]
Westwood was born as Vivienne Isabel Swire in the village of Tintwistle, Derbyshire on 8 April 1941. She studied at the Harrow School of Art, later to attend the University of Westminster, for one term. Vivienne went on to attend Middlesex University's Trent Park College and later taught at a primary school in North London.[2]
Malcolm McLaren
Vivienne's first husband was Derek Westwood. Their three-year marriage produced two children; a daughter named Rose and a son named Ben. Westwood then met Malcolm McLaren, who became the manager of the punk band The Sex Pistols. Westwood and McLaren lived in a council flat in Clapham and had a son they named Joseph. Westwood continued to teach until 1971, when Malcolm decided to open a shop at 430 King's Road - Let It Rock (also known as Sex, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Seditionaries). Westwood began to sell her outrageous designs in the shop. During this period, Westwood, McLaren, and artist Jamie Reid were influenced by the Situationists. Westwood still owns this shop, which is now known as World's End, from which she sells her Anglomania label. Dame Vivienne Westwood is currently (as of 2009) married to her former fashion student, Austrian-born Andreas Kronthaler.
Punk
The English Punk style began to gain attention when the Sex Pistols wore clothes from Westwood and McLaren's shop at their first gig. The "punk style" included BDSM fashion, bondage gear, safety pins, razor blades, bicycle or lavatory chains on clothing and spiked dog collars for jewelry, as well as outrageous make-up and hair. Essential design elements include the adoption of traditional elements of Scottish design such as tartan fabric. Amongst the more unusual elements of her style is the use of historical 17th and 18th century cloth cutting principles, and reinterpreting these in, for instance, radical cutting lines to mens trousers. Use of these traditional elements make the overall effect of her designs more shocking. Other influences in Westwood's work have included Peru, the feminine figure, velvet and knitwear.[citation needed]
Westwood and McLaren worked together to revolutionize fashion and their impact is still strongly felt today. Westwood has five exclusively-owned shops; three in London, one in Leeds, and one in Milan.[citation needed] Franchise stores are located in Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, three in Manchester and most recently, in FH Mall, Nottingham (20 March 2008), and in Blake Street, York (11 September 2008). Westwood's themes have included Savage (1981), Hobo and Buffalo (1982), and Pirate. Her latest collection was themed "Gold and Treasure, Adventure and Exploration".[citation needed]
Artistic collections
The first major retrospective of her work was shown in 2004–5 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the National Gallery of Australia. The exhibition, created from approximately 145 complete outfits grouped into the themes from the early 1970s to the present day, was drawn from her own personal archive and the V&A's extensive collection. They range from early punk garments to glamorous "historical" evening gowns.[citation needed]
Her Autumn/Winter 2005/06 Propaganda Collection drew inspiration from her archive, reinterpreting designs using Wolford’s exclusive knitting technology. Westwood has worked in close collaboration with Wolford since 2003. In 2006, she collaborated with Nine West, whose shoes are not designed directly by Westwood, however the Nine West brand name shares its label with Westwood. Westwood's Gold Label and MAN hats are created by Prudence Millinery. In December 2003, she and the Wedgwood pottery company launched a series of tea sets featuring her designs.[citation needed]
Artistic influence
Westwood has been influential in launching the careers of other designers into the British fashion industry. She employed the services of Patrick Cox to design shoes for her Clint Eastwood collection in 1984. The result was a prototype for nine-inch-heeled shoes like the ones worn by supermodel Naomi Campbell when she fell during a Westwood fashion show in Paris in 1994.[citation needed]
Swallows Wood
In May 2006, Westwood wrote a poem and provided personal photos eulogising Swallows Wood, a Nature Reserve near Tintwistle where she was born and grew up. The Reserve has been threatened with destruction by the construction of the Longdendale Bypass.[citation needed]
Sex and the City
Demonstrating the impact of her long career, Westwood's designs were featured in the 2008 film adaptation of the award winning television series Sex and the City. In the film version of the television series, Carrie Bradshaw becomes engaged to long term lover Mr. Big. Being a writer at Vogue, her editor invites her to model wedding dresses for an upcoming article called "The Last Single Girl". One of the dresses featured in the photo shoot is a design made by Westwood and it is subsequently sent to Carrie as a gift, with a handwritten note from Westwood herself. Although she has already picked an outfit for the wedding, Carrie immediately decides to wear the Westwood gown instead. Despite being invited to participate in the making of the movie, Westwood was unimpressed with the costuming by renowned stylist Patricia Field. She walked out of the film's London premiere after 10 minutes, publicly criticising the clothing featured as being frumpy and boring. The wedding dress has subsequently become widely recognised as one of the movie's most iconic features and has led Westwood to approach the producers about being involved in making a sequel.[3]
In September 2005, Westwood joined forces with the British civil rights group Liberty and launched exclusive limited design T-shirts and baby wear bearing the slogan I AM NOT A TERRORIST, please don't arrest me. Westwood said she was supporting the campaign and defending habeas corpus. "When I was a schoolgirl, my history teacher, Mr. Scott, began to take classes in civic affairs. The first thing he explained to us was the fundamental rule of law embodied in habeas corpus. He spoke with pride of civilization and democracy. The hatred of arbitrary arrest by the lettres de cachet of the French monarchy caused the storming of the Bastille. We can only take democracy for granted if we insist on our liberty", she said.[5] The sale of the £50 T-shirts raised funds for the organisation. Dame Vivienne has recently stated on television that she has transferred her long standing support for the Labour Party to the Conservative Party, over the issues of civil liberties and human rights.[6]
Westwood was advanced from OBE to DBE in the 2006 New Year's Honours List for services to fashion, and has thrice earned the award for British Designer of the Year. Westwood is the godmother of highfashion model and socialite lady Elissa Spencer-Wilhelmsen Ainsworth, and was the one who discovered designer Rosamund Lodge-Ainsworth who happens to be Lady Elissa's sister-in-law, after marrying lord Philip Spencer-Wilhelmsen Ainsworth. Westwood and the bride designed the wedding dress and she attended the wedding with her sons.[citation needed]
Children
Ben Westwood, son of Vivienne and Derek Westwood, is a photographer of erotica.
Rose Westwood, daughter of Vivienne and Derek Westwood.
Notorious for going knicker-less, she caused a stir in 1992 when she came to collect the OBE, reportedly revealing all.[citation needed] After being made a Dame in 2006 by the Prince of Wales she disclosed that she was knicker-less again. [8]
