Vivienne Westwood

Westwood, who was also awarded damehood by the late Queen Elizabeth II, was born April 8, 1941.

Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, has died.

She held a large “climate revolution” banner at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony in London, and frequently turned her models into catwalk eco-warriors. “Her boutique on the Kings Road was a landmark in the late 70’s and early 80’s , subversive and exciting. From the late 1960s, she lived in a small flat in south London for some 30 years and cycled to work. Their son Ben was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966. Her sky-high platform shoes garnered worldwide attention in 1993 when model Naomi Campbell stumbled on the catwalk in a pair. “There was no punk before me and Malcolm,” Westwood said in the biography. [Thierry Mugler, who also died this year](/link/follow-20170101-p59qwb), 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 ... “She was really charmed by the Australian bush and animals. I never copied her but her ‘f–k you and go for it’ attitude and her anarchy [was a huge influence] … Her innovation and impact over the last 60 years has been immense and will continue into the future.” “Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. 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.

English fashion designer Vivienne Westwood dies "peacefully and surrounded by her family", aged 81.

Their son Ben was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966. Because they keep on telling a story. "My clothes have a story. "That's why they become classics. A recycling mentality pervaded her work, and she repeatedly told fashionistas to "choose well" and "buy less". "The only reason I am in fashion is to destroy the word 'conformity'," Westwood said in her 2014 biography.

The flamboyant designer died on December 29, according to a statement posted to Twitter by her representatives. WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Vivienne Westwood dies.

“The beginning of the year —Thierry Mugler - Jan 23. Tao gives you a feeling that you belong to the cosmos and gives purpose to your life; it gives you such a sense of identity and strength to know you’re living the life you can live and therefore ought to be living: make full use of your character and full use of your life on earth.’” what a life, what a woman. A true fashion icon RIP Dame Vivienne Westwood.” The post concluded with the words: “The world needs people like Vivienne to make a change for the better.” “The world needs people like Vivienne to make a change for the better.”

The pioneer who brought punk-inspired creations to the mainstream has died aged 81.

As well as climate change, Westwood became a vocal supporter for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is fighting extradition to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act. I am grateful for the moments I got to share with you and Andreas." They shot to fame in 1976 wearing Westwood and McLaren's designs. The Victoria and Albert Museum, which houses some of her works, described Westwood as a "true revolutionary and rebellious force in fashion". Singer Boy George, who first met Westwood in the early 1980s, called her "great and inspiring" and "without question she is the undisputed Queen of British fashion". Westwood made her name with her controversial punk and new wave styles in the 1970s and went on to dress some of the biggest stars in fashion.

Westwood's fashion career began in the 1970s with the punk explosion, when her radical approach to urban street style took the world by storm.

She approached her work with gusto in her early years, but over time seemed to tire of the clamor and buzz. "They gave the punk movement a look, a style, and it was so radical it broke from anything in the past," he said. But Westwood was able to make the transition from punk to haute couture without missing a beat, keeping her career going without stooping to self-caricature. She dressed like a teenager even in her 60s and became an outspoken advocate of fighting global warming, warning of planetary doom if climate change was not controlled. As her stature grew, she seemed to transcend fashion, with her designs shown in museum collections throughout the world. But she went on to enjoy a long career highlighted by a string of triumphant runway shows in London, Paris, Milan and New York.

Yesterday in São Paulo, Brazil time, it was announced that he died at the hospital from multiple organ failure, a complication of colon cancer, at the age of 82 ...

Westwood was also known for her activism and in recent times her support of Julian Assange. Last year Pelé had surgery to have a colon tumour removed. Westwood, who was the British Fashion Designer of the Year in 1990, 1991, 2006, also was awarded an OBE in 1992 and a DBE in the 2006 New Year’s Honours List ‘for services to fashion’.

Jess Cartner-Morley recalls meeting the anti-establishment fashion designer and political activist who shaped punk culture and street style.

For all her apparent eccentricity, Westwood had a very clear-eyed view of what mattered in life – and she knew that it wasn’t clothes. She was invited to Buckingham Palace to be awarded royal honours twice – in 1992, when she was given an OBE, and in 2006 when she was made a dame – and went knickerless both times. And for all her countercultural, defiantly anti-traditional image, she lived that most old-fashioned of lives, a happily married one, for 30 years since marrying Andreas Kronthaler, an Austrian 25 years her junior whom she met while teaching at art school in Vienna. A true original, Westwood was impossible to pigeonhole. 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, Her Portraits collection, a decade later, put corsets and pearls back in fashion for the first time since the 18th century – three decades later, teenage girls are still saving up for iconic Vivienne Westwood gold-orbed pearl chokers. I was supposed to be interviewing her about her fashion legacy, but she was not remotely interested in discussing clothes. 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. (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. [Vivienne Westwood](https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/vivienne-westwood) was a very British kind of genius. They were deliberately off-kilter – partly by dint of being ahead of their time – but they were always elegant. Safety pins were a celebration of anarchy and flux.

Fashion iconoclast Vivienne Westwood said she created clothes for heroes. "Anyone who wants to feel romantic about themselves. If you ever wished you were 6 ...

The tartan is included in the Scottish Register of Tartans. She made it dishevelled and dyed and ripped and strange. Westwood was in her early 30s at the time and a primary school teacher who sewed all the clothes in her living room. Apparently the reason Campbell came undone on the catwalk was because she was wearing rubber tights under a plaid skirt. Westwood appreciated the "strange beauty" of latex and rubber according to Victoria and Albert Museum senior curator Claire Wilcox. The tweed is crafted without the use of automation or electricity. So, it was sort of this hybrid moment," Ms Wilcox said. In fact, the latter hired McLaren for a post-punk re-branding six months after the Pirate catwalk show. Westwood's focus had moved from punk to 18th century dandies, Native American dress and plundering the Third World. She was devoted to creating the most fantastical, strange surreal visions of beauty she could possibly summon. Westwood, who died on Thursday, practised what she preached: When she met the Queen in 1992, she arrived at Buckingham Palace without knickers. From Hot Topic to Martin Margiela, everyone has taken a page from her book."

Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, has died.

She held a large “climate revolution” banner at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony in London, and frequently turned her models into catwalk eco-warriors. “Her boutique on the Kings Road was a landmark in the late 70’s and early 80’s , subversive and exciting. From the late 1960s, she lived in a small flat in south London for some 30 years and cycled to work. Their son Ben was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966. Her sky-high platform shoes garnered worldwide attention in 1993 when model Naomi Campbell stumbled on the catwalk in a pair. “There was no punk before me and Malcolm,” Westwood said in the biography. [Thierry Mugler, who also died this year](/link/follow-20170101-p59qwb), 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 ... “She was really charmed by the Australian bush and animals. I never copied her but her ‘f–k you and go for it’ attitude and her anarchy [was a huge influence] … Her innovation and impact over the last 60 years has been immense and will continue into the future.” “Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. 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.

When Vivienne Westwood, who created the torn tartan coattails the Sex Pistols rode to punk stardom in the seventies, accepted an OBE from Queen Elizabeth in ...

The use of your graphics on our T-shirt was only ever meant to be a celebration of your work. Westwood also designed the extravagant dress worn by Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw for her aborted wedding in the Sex and the City movie. We are truly sorry about this mistake and want to make it up to you.” T-shirts with the slogan “We do big sizes! Westwood also took the counterintuitive move of encouraging customers to buy fewer clothes. “Vivienne Westwood’s contribution to fashion is unique, perhaps unparalleled,” British fashion journalist Alexander Fury writes in Vivienne Westwood: Catwalk. She wasn’t wearing knickers (Westwood, not the Queen) for the ceremony, or to collect her damehood in 2006. [Controversial designers Dolce & Gabbana](https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/the-troubled-marriage-between-the-kardashians-and-fashion-s-bad-boys-20220523-p5ant3.html) built an empire and Kardashian client base on corsets, revived by Westwood in 1991. Westwood’s talent was often obscured by a love of stunts, almost greater than that of her ex-partner, Sex Pistols promoter Malcolm McLaren. The brand was accused of plagiarism in the autumn/winter 2017/18 collection. We do very small sizes!!” had been lifted from designers Louise Gray and Rottingdean Bazaar. [Jean Paul Gaultier a star](https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-life-in-revue-jean-paul-gaultier-s-fashion-freak-show-20190806-p52ef4.html) in 1987 and became the uniform of Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour, are pointedly apparent in Westwood’s Buffalo collection of 1982.

No fashion designer ever had a Paris show like the one staged by Vivienne Westwood in 1991. Although she was by then 50 and had been making clothes for sale ...

Westwood accepted an offer of management from the fashion PR Carlo D’Amario, and they travelled to Italy to seek backing for a label of her own. With introductions from rag trade friends, she moved incrementally into bank loans and business funding to pay off the debts of Worlds End, and to buy rather than rent her second shop, in Davies Street, Mayfair. Westwood’s politics, unstoppably advocated, were anti-establishment, whatever the current establishment might be, and settled in the direction of Green party-pro-environmentalism, although there were problems over her company’s tax-related fine for undervaluing its assets, and its corporate tax wriggles. The Harris tweed, tartan and barathea of her collection of 1987, again sewn in the flat, recalled Glossop’s stout wool stuffs, respecting tradition yet radically cut. Westwood was discovering that her work was known, and admired, more outside Britain than in it. She returned to her parents, and began to make jewellery for a stall in Portobello Road. These she printed with slogans and lewd images, gay and straight; she distressed and adorned them, dyed them in her bath and stitched on chicken bones boiled clean in the kitchen. Its next incarnation was as SEX, in 1974, with Westwood sourcing its stock of rubber fetish-wear through the pages of Exchange & Mart. Her father was a factory worker; her mother had been in the mills and appreciated a length of good wool worsted – although everything was in short supply during Viv’s childhood. She became a primary school teacher and in 1962 married Derek Westwood, a toolmaker with ambitions, which he achieved, to be an airline pilot. She was born in Tintwistle, just outside the mill town of Glossop, Derbyshire, the daughter of Dora (nee Ball) and Gordon Swire. No fashion designer ever had a Paris show like the one staged by Vivienne Westwood in 1991.

Greenpeace called her a 'true radical' and Hynde said 'the world is already a less interesting place'

Friends of the Earth said she had been “a redoubtable opponent of fracking and her role in supporting and invigorating the movement in the UK was absolutely invaluable”. Outside Buckingham Palace, she gave a twirl to photographers, revealing to all the world that she had worn no knickers. The pair opened a small shop on Kings Road in Chelsea in 1971 that became a haunt of many of the bands she dressed, including the Sex Pistols, who were managed by McLaren. Born in the Derbyshire village of Tintwistle in 1941, Westwood moved with her family to London in 1957, where she attended art school for one term. She said on Twitter: “Vivienne is gone and the world is already a less interesting place.” They’re wearing a T-shirt that says: Just Stop Oil. Someone who forced fashion forward in a crucible of heat combined with an unswerving dedication to fairness, justice and the salvation of our planet. If we could all live this ideal, the world would be a better place.” Since her earliest punk days, Westwood remixed and inverted imagery drawn from the British monarchy. Addressing Westwood in an Instagram post, the American fashion designer Marc Jacobs said he was “heartbroken”, adding: “You did it first. Rest in peace dear Vivienne, although, somehow peace seems like the wrong word.” There was also recognition of Westwood’s long-running involvement in environmental activism.

Vivienne Westwood, iconic fashion designer, died Thursday at age 81. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Ian Kelly, the co-author of Vivienne Westwood's memoir, ...

And - but it was typical of Vivienne because, you know, she was very proud of her - I guess that was the OBE and then her damehood from the queen. I mean, you know, she was cycling to work in London, you know, every day on platform heels all the way through her 70s and working, you know, right to the end. And she was fascinating to be around in that regard 'cause she was, you know, the most curious person I've ever met, in both senses of the word - so interested in everything but also, you know, kind of eccentric. But the look - well, yeah, I suppose you'd characterize it, as you mentioned, with an idea of the semi-destroyed, the punk look that addressed a lot of sort of ideas from contemporary art then of sticking things onto things, safety pins and the like that have become mainstream, the deconstruction of clothes so that you notice, to an extent, how they are made, rather in the ways they were experimenting with modern architecture at the same time. You could date to her the platform shoe, the modern corset, the idea of, you know, underwear as outerwear. She was 81 and widely respected as one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century.