Vivienne Westwood broke the rules of fashion and had an extraordinary influence on British culture and design, from defining the Punk look in the 1970s to her role as global fashion icon and the activism that was central to the later years of her life.
‘I've constantly tried to provoke people into thinking afresh and for themselves, to escape their inhibitions and programming.’
Vivienne Westwood
EARLY YEARS
Born in Cheshire in 1941, Vivienne Swire grew up in rural Derbyshire, far from the world of high fashion. An early desire for creativity led her to enrol on a jewellery and silversmithing course in Harrow, following a move to the area with her family. Leaving after only one term, however, she retrained and took up a position as a primary school teacher, during which time she married Derek Westwood, had a son, and made and sold her own jewellery from a stall on Portobello Road.
However, after meeting Malcolm McLaren, a designer and future manager of The Sex Pistols, she left her marriage and moved to Balham with McLaren and her son. Whilst she taught until 1971, she began making Teddy Boy clothes with McLaren, sidestepping the hippie styles of the late 60s and early 70s, preferring to hark back to the fashion and styles of the 1950s, albeit with a rebellious edge.
A Circa 1976 Vivienne Westwood & Malcolm McLaren Seditionary 'Destroy' Long Sleeved T-Shirt, Seditionaries Collection, 1977-81 (Sold for £450 plus buyer's premium)
THE KINGS ROAD
The pair opened their first shop in 1971 - the infamous 430 King’s Road in Chelsea - naming the small boutique ‘Let it Rock’. By the following year, their interest had switched to biker-inspired clothing with leather and zips, rebranding the shop ‘Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die’ under a skull and cross bones logo. The pair would go on to rebrand their shop with every new collection.
Next came their iconic printed t-shirts, emblazoned with provocative logos and slogans, which enraged the establishment so much that they were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act; in true rebel fashion, they responded by producing more t-shirts with hardcore imagery and by 1974 had renamed their shop ‘Sex’, using the slogan ‘rubberware for the office’.
Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, 'Seditionaries' 'The Great Rock N'Roll Swindle' T-Shirt, circa 1978 (Estimate: £500-800 plus buyer's premium).
PUNK
In the late 1970s, Westwood defined the punk look. Mclaren was now the manager of The Sex Pistols, and their anthem ‘God Save the Queen’ hit number one in 1976. Westwood spoke of punk as a way of putting a ‘spoke in the system’ and representing the disillusioned youth of the 1970s.
Turning the straps, zips, straightjackets and chains of fetishes into fashion, they renamed their shop yet again, this time to ‘Seditionaries’, and it became the meeting place for London’s punk scene. Clothing was slashed, oversized, with seams and labels on the outside – always challenging the normal rules of fashion.
Always one to champion outsider subcultures, once the punk look was adopted by the mainstream, Westwood became disenchanted. In 1980 the shop was refitted and rebranded ‘World’s End’, the name by which it still goes today.
Vivienne Westwood, 'Voyage to Cythera' Two-Piece Harlequin Mini-Crini, A/W 1989, (Estimate: £8,000-12,000 plus buyer's premium)
PAGAN
The 1980s saw Westwood become part of the high fashion establishment, following her first official catwalk show for her ‘Pirate’ Collection in 1981; this collection informed the aesthetic of the World’s End boutique, which began stocking the Neo-Romantic look and inspired Adam and the Ants’ famous outfits.
This was the first of numerous collections that looked to traditional or historical tailoring for inspiration, reimagining shapes and introducing asymmetry and draped garments. Westwood was an avid researcher, and built up an extraordinary knowledge of historical fashion, picking and choosing which rules to use and which ones to break. She studied museum collections and the costume painted by the likes of Van Dyck and Watteau, yet all her clothes were designed to be dynamic and move with the body. One of her most iconic designs of the 1980s was the ‘mini-crini’ – a mini dress with a short, hooped crinoline – a mix of traditional restriction and modern liberation.
Following up with collections such as ‘Nostalgia of Mud’, and clothes that parodied the fashion of the upper-class elite (the so-called ‘Tatler Girls’), one of her most influential collections was the 1987 ‘Harris Tweed’ collection. She later explained that:
“My whole idea for this collection was stolen from a little girl I saw on the tube one day. She couldn’t have been more than 14. She had a little plaited bun, a Harris Tweed jacket, and a bag with a pair of ballet shoes in it. She looked so cool and composed standing there.”
Focussing on the Scottish fabric, which is still traditionally made exclusively in the Outer Hebrides, Westwood helped revive the industry by bringing it into the eye of the fashion industry and opening new markets.
In 1986, she introduced her now globally-recognised orb logo – strikingly like that of the Harris tweed industry, and in 1988 opened her own boutique on Davies Street.
Collection followed collection, bringing together a vast range of inspirations from Picasso to traditional Peruvian dress, Blade Runner to Tokyo’s neon signs and of course traditional English tweed tailoring.
Vivienne Westwood London Harris Tweed Jacket, Vive La Cocotte Collection 1995-6, with matching waistcoat (Sold for £1,300 plus buyer's premium)
ANGLOMANIA
By 1990 Westwood was firmly established in the world of high fashion, being named Fashion Designer of the Year twice and receiving an OBE in 1992.
In 1993-4 she created one of her most iconic collections, ‘Anglomania’, in which she combined traditional British tailoring and the French love of exaggerated proportions. It was for this collection, too, that she created the McAndreas tartan, which was woven in Lochcarron, became officially recognised by the Tartan authorities and was named after her assistant and second husband Andreas Kronthaler. Anglomania was one of her most legendary shows, and the one in which Naomi Campbell fell from her platform purple boots.
For the rest of the decade, Westwood was at the peak of high fashion, creating collections focussed on couture tailoring and tartan, taking influence from her earlier designs. She launched boutiques worldwide and even created her own perfume, Boudoir.
In 2004 the V&A held a major retrospective of her work, the first time they had exhibited a contemporary designer on such a scale, and she went on to receive her Damehood – although in true Westwood fashion, she claimed to have gone to her investiture with no underwear on.
Vivienne Westwood, Anglomania Black and White Large Spotty Mini-Crini, circa 2000s (Estimate: £400-600 plus buyer's premium)
ACTIVISM
Throughout her long career, Westwood always used fashion to fight social injustice and as a way of getting across her political beliefs. However, in her later years, she focussed on environmental activism, specifically getting consumers to behave more responsibly.
A rebel until her death in 2022, Westwood left a lasting impact on the British fashion industry, and indeed on British culture itself.
View the Vivienne Westwood: Five Decades at the Cutting Edge Sale
