Vivienne Westwood, a renowned fashion maverick who was a pivotal figure in the punk movement, died Thursday at the age of 81.
Vivienne Westwood eponymous fashion business announced her death on social media, stating that she passed away quietly. But the cause is not revealed.
“Vivienne continued to do what she loved right up until the end, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and influencing the world for the better,” according to the statement.
Westwood’s fashion career began in the 1970s, when her avant-garde approach to urban street style captivated the world. She went on to have a long and successful career, punctuated by a string of triumphant runway shows and museum exhibitions.
Westwood’s name became synonymous with flair and attitude even as her focus moved from year to year, her range extensive and her work unpredictable.
She seemed to transcend fashion as her stature grew. Even while she kept her hair dyed that signature vivid shade of orange, the young woman who had insulted the British establishment eventually became one of its leading lights.
According to Andrew Bolton, director of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Westwood and her former partner, Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, “gave the punk movement a look, a style, and it was so radical it broke from anything in the past.”
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“Ripped clothes, safety pins, aggressive statements,” Bolton explained. “She popularized postmodernism. It was extremely influential beginning in the mid-1970s. The punk movement never died; it’s now part of our fashion vocabulary. It’s becoming commonplace.”
Westwood’s long career was riddled with inconsistencies: she was a lifelong rebel who was honored multiple times by Queen Elizabeth II. Even in her 60s, she dressed like a youngster and became an active champion for combating climate change, warning of world disaster.
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Westwood’s outfits were often purposely provocative during her punk days: T-shirts with images of naked lads and “bondage pants” with sadomasochistic implications were typical fare in her successful London boutiques. But Vivienne Westwood was able to seamlessly segue from punk to high couture, sustaining her career without succumbing to self-parody.
“She was constantly attempting to reinvent fashion. Her work is both provocative and transgressive. It’s steeped in the English heritage of pastiche, irony, and satire. She is quite proud of her Englishness, and she still flaunts it “Bolton stated.
One of the divisive designs included a swastika, an inverted image of Jesus Christ on the cross, and the word “Destroy.” She stated in an autobiography co-written with Ian Kelly that it was intended as part of a message against politicians torturing people, mentioning Chile’s Augusto Pinochet as an example. In a 2009 interview with Time magazine, Vivienne Westwood was asked if she regretted wearing the swastika, and she responded no.
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“I don’t, because we were just saying to the older generation, ‘We don’t accept your values or your taboos, and you’re all fascists,'” she responded.
She was enthusiastic about her profession in her early years, but she soon became tired of the commotion and buzz. After decades of designing, she occasionally spoke wistfully of leaving fashion to focus on environmental and educational causes.
“Fashion can be so boring,” she admitted to The Associated Press after debuting one of her new designs during a 2010 event. “I’m looking for something else to do.”
Her runway displays were always the most glamorous affairs, attracting celebrities from the glittering worlds of film, music, and television who sought to bask in Westwood’s reflected splendor. Nonetheless, she spoke out against consumerism and ostentatious buying, even advising others not to buy her pricey, handcrafted garments.
“All I tell folks is to quit buying clothes,” she explained. “Why not safeguard this precious gift of life while we still have it? I don’t believe that destruction is unavoidable. Some of us want to put a stop to it and assist others live.”
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Westwood’s advocacy extended to his support for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who posed in a massive birdcage in 2020 to try to prevent his extradition to the United States. She even designed the gown Stella Moris wore when she married Assange in a London prison this past March.
Westwood was self-taught and had no traditional fashion education. She told Marie Claire magazine that as a youngster, she learnt how to sew her own outfits by following patterns. She found old clothes at marketplaces and pulled them apart to study the cut and construction when she intended to sell 1950s-style items in her first business.
On April 8, 1941, Westwood was born in the Derbyshire village of Glossop. In 1957, her family relocated to London, and she attended art school for one term.
She met McLaren in the 1960s after splitting from her first husband, Derek Westwood, while working as a primary school teacher. In 1971, at the tail end of the “Swinging London” era heralded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, she and McLaren launched a tiny business in Chelsea.
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The shop’s name and focus changed multiple times, including “SEX” (where Westwood and McLaren were fined in 1975 for a “indecent exhibition”), “World’s End,” and “Seditionaries.”
Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, who worked at their business, described Westwood as “a one off, dedicated, single minded, gifted lady” in a statement to The Associated Press.
He described it as an honor “to have rubbed elbows with her in the mid ’70s at the inception of punk and the worldwide waves it caused that still reverberate and resonate now for the dissatisfied, hipper, and wiser around the world.”
“Vivienne is gone, and the world is already a less interesting place,” Chrissie Hynde, the Pretenders’ frontwoman and another former employee, tweeted.
With her “Pirates” collection, which debuted in her first runway presentation in 1981, Westwood pioneered a new style of design. That moment is recognized with steering Westwood in a more conventional path, demonstrating her desire in combining historical British motifs into current clothing.
It was also a key milestone in Westwood’s ongoing reconciliation with the fashion world. The renegade soon rose to prominence as one of its most recognized stars, famed for reinterpreting extravagant gowns from the past and frequently drawing inspiration from 18th century artworks.
But she never stopped shocking: her Statue of Liberty corset in 1987 is regarded as the beginning of the “underwear as outerwear” trend.
She soon expanded into a variety of business ventures, including an alliance with Italian designer Giorgio Armani, and created her ready-to-wear Red Label brand, her more exclusive Gold Label line, a menswear collection, and the scents Boudoir and Libertine. Westwood stores have opened in New York, Hong Kong, Milan, and other major cities.
In 1990 and 1991, the British Fashion Council honored her designer of the year.
Her tense relationship with the British elite was arguably best highlighted by her 1992 visit to Buckingham Palace to receive an Order of the British Empire medal: she wore no panties and posed for cameras in such a way that it was obvious.
Westwood was called back to earn the even more prestigious distinction of Dame Commander of the British Empire — the female equivalent of a knighthood — in 2006.
Westwood is survived by two kids and her second husband, Austrian-born designer Andreas Kronthaler, who had a fashion line under her trademark.
The first was her son with Derek Westwood, fashion photographer Ben Westwood. Joe Corre, her son with McLaren, co-founded the premium Agent Provocateur underwear business and once torched what he claimed was a million-dollar collection of punk memorabilia: “Punk was never, never meant to be nostalgic,” he declared.
