“Bexit is a crime! “On February 17, 2019, in the middle of London Fashion Week, in a church in the Westminster district, it was with these words that the models of Vivienne Westwood addressed the assembly – made up of journalists and buyers. The mixed parade had taken on the appearance of a manifesto, activists had mingled with models, and pro-European slogans or in favor of sustainable and responsible fashion had flared up. The designer passed away on December 29, at the age of 81.
Activist first and foremost?
It was not the first time that Lady Vivienne Westwood – she was knighted by Buckingham in 1992 – passed on a political message. In the past, the designer had already come out in favor of the independence of Scotland, for the freedom of the Australian cyberactivist Julian Assange or against shale gas. In 2015, she even drove by the Prime Minister’s home, David Cameron, near Oxford. It should also be noted that the notes of intent for his fashion shows have often taken the form of leaflets.
Until the end, the designer will have lost none of her militant verve, congratulating the action of Greta Thunberg or praising Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Labor, in 2019. However, nothing predestined Vivienne Westwood – born Vivienne Isabel Swire – , daughter of a stevedore and a stay-at-home mother, originally from Tintwistle, a village of 1,400 souls in the county of Derbyshire, one of the great voices of fashion. Moreover, before being a stylist, the young woman had first embraced a career as a teacher.
The muse of punk
It will be necessary to wait for the 1970s and his meeting with his companion, the late Malcolm McLaren, manager of the British pop rock group the Sex Pistols, for the young woman to express herself in the fashion sector. The couple first made a name for themselves when they opened a clothes shop at 430 King’s Road, London in 1971, which changed its name to Let it Rock, Sex, Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die –, decor and atmosphere as collections are renewed.
There, their first creations were inspired by the street in general and punk vocabulary in particular: biker jackets, t-shirts with holes, zips, messages – some written from sewn chicken bones – or enhanced with laminated images of pin-ups or photos of naked cowboys… Doing product placement ahead of time, the Sex Pistols promoted the couple’s clothes. It is always associated with Malcolm McLaren – and this until their separation in 1984 – that Vivienne Westwood presents her first shows in his name from 1982.
The neo-romantic turn
It starts in London with the neo-romantic “Pirates” collection, which remasters the traditional clothes of corsairs between games of prints, golden hues and fluidity. Here, Vivienne Westwood abandons the punk aesthetic to focus on period costumes and thus give birth to new ideas. And this always with the dose of irreverence, the part of glamor and unbridled creativity that sign his style.
In this momentum, she revives on the catwalk crinolines with a parade called “Mini-Crini” (spring-summer 1985) or corsets that she revisits with a print taken from a canvas of the painter of the XVIIIe century François Boucher Daphnis and Chloe (1743). She also revived the “cocottes” of Second Empire France with the “Vive la cocotte” collection (fall-winter 1995-1996), which depicted emancipated women decked out in spectacular lace-up dresses, emphasizing the shapes, and cut in a pink and blue duchess satin. The references to the britishness are never far away and also punctuate his parades, between the use of tartan, a revisited Union Jack and modernized kilts.
If “British”
In 1996, his autumn-winter collection “Storm in a cup of tea” featured creatures with deliberately outrageous make-up dressed in asymmetrical suits and tartan fabrics. We also remember her capsule collection bearing the effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, imagined on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee in 2012 – note also that Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, has several times made appeal to the talents of lady Westwood on a personal basis – or a few years earlier, in 1989, of her own parodied look in the manner of Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, on the cover of the magazine Tatler.
Success is there, the awards are raining down – she has been named “Designer of The Year” three times (in 1990, 1991 and 2006) at the British Fashion Awards ceremony –, the biographies too, the lines within of the brand are multiplying (Red Label, Gold Label, Anglomania and Man), the perfume department of the house will see the birth of several juices (Boudoir, Libertine, Anglomania and Let it Rock) and exhibitions about it are not lacking (in the lead the Victoria and Albert Museum retrospective in 2004 celebrating her three decades in the fashion world).
Forever connected
If the 2000s were placed more under the sign of politically responsible fashion, Vivienne Westwood – now supported by her husband and collaborator Andreas Kronthaler, twenty-five years her junior – did not lose her creative, even trendy aura.
We remember that in 2018 the Italian designer Riccardo Tisci, barely appointed to the artistic direction of the English juggernaut Burberry, had chosen to call on her to sign a limited edition collection. Together, they declined iconic pieces from Vivienne Westwood’s punk wardrobe in the famous Burberry tartan.
All against a backdrop of a committed score, since with this operation the duo showed their support to the Cool Earth association, in favor of the protection of forests. Eternal rebel with a provocative spirit – although she denies it over the interviews –, Vivienne Westwood, 81 years oldwill also have proven that style can be served while sending a strong political message. Britain’s most famous designer was also a pioneer in responsible fashion.