Vivienne Westwood
This is how the inventor of punk fashion lives
Vivienne Westwood can look back on an exciting life at the age of 80.
© taniavolobueva / Shutterstock
Vivienne Westwood, the inventor of punk fashion, celebrates her 80th birthday on April 8th and still lives an eccentric life.
She is considered the “Queen of Punk”: Vivienne Westwood (80) has been inspiring the fashion world for decades with her creations made of checked patterns, rivets and corsets. The British designer is not just the eternally eccentric rebel of the fashion scene. She was born as Vivienne Isabel Swire 80 years ago in the small town of Glossop in central England. One might think that her parents – mother weaver and father shoemaker – instilled a love of fashion in her cradle. But Vivienne initially took a different path …
Your first job? Teacher!
Vivienne Westwood started her professional life with a conventional livelihood: after completing her training as a teacher, the Briton taught at a primary school in north London from 1961. A year later she married the toolmaker Derek Westwood. Son Ben was born in 1963. But the young family happiness should not last.
Their first creations were born of necessity
The marriage ended in divorce in 1965, Vivienne Westwood had met and fallen in love with a friend of her brother’s. Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010) became her life partner and father of their second son Joseph, who was born in 1967. As a mother of two, Westwood began making her own clothes. She had already been interested in fashion as a student, but never pursued the passion. Westwood taught herself to sew by taking clothes apart and then sewing them back together.
McLaren, manager of the famous punk band Sex Pistols by profession, turned this activity born of necessity into a business idea. The couple opened one shop after the other in London from 1971 onwards and created new trends at the same speed. Among other things, this earned her the title “Inventor of Punk”.
Your first fashion week
Even then it was foreseeable that Westwood would like to be inspired by historical events or certain social groups in her creations. With this in mind, the fashion designer brought her first professional collection onto the catwalk in 1981. The title: “Pirates” – the intention: a farewell to the punk scene as it drifted more and more into the mainstream.
In love with a young student
In the 1980s she met the 25 years younger Tyrolean Andreas Kronthaler as a visiting professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. The two married in 1992 and have been in the fashion industry together ever since.
Your secret to staying so young is according to “The Guardian”not to wash too often. Her husband insured in 2017: “She only bathes once a week.” She also does yoga, as she told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin” in an interview on her 70th birthday. When it comes to aging, the couple have a clear agreement: “Should I become a need for care, I don’t want him to be one of the people who care for me. I will move back to my hometown, live in a little house and have books read. I’m not afraid of being alone. ”
She lived in a social housing for many years
“My philosophy is that it is our duty to understand this world because it is a gift to even have our feet on this planet, which is probably the only one of its kind in the entire universe, with these very unusual conditions”, declared Westwood in 2014 in an interview with “Zeit Magazin”. The fashion designer always ties interviews to the condition that she also speaks about saving the earth.
For 30 years she lived simply and modestly for £ 400 rent in a two-room council flat in Clapham, a south-west part of London. It was not until 2000 that her husband Andreas Kronthaler was able to persuade her to move into her house built in 1703 in the Queen Anne style.
She remains a fashion pioneer
Westwood describes itself as an “Eco-Warrior” and stands up for the issues that are close to her heart with her collections and protest campaigns. When she announced in 2007 that she wanted to completely do without fur in her collections, she was one of the first luxury brands to do this. Commitments for the closure of Guantánamo Bay as well as against the construction of nuclear submarines and support for “Fridays for Future” are a matter of honor for them.
She rides her bike in all weather conditions
Your environmental awareness is also reflected in the way you get around. You always go from A to B by bike – at any conceivable time of the year. “I ride a bicycle,” she explained to the “SZ-Magazin” in an interview. She feels that cars are a burden. You don’t mind rainy weather in the least. “I think it’s great to cycle in such weather. I put on my rain cape and then Andreas and I drive the 20 minutes from our house to the office,” she once revealed in an interview with the “Tagesspiegel”.
“Anyone who intends to violate etiquette should have studied it beforehand”
Rebellion in style. A motto that Vivienne Westwood describes quite aptly as a person. “Anyone can buy fashion with money. Style is the intelligent deviation from norms that one has to know. That is why style cannot be had without education and experience,” Westwood explained to SZ-Magazin. “Style also means that you bring your clothes and your behavior to one another. Anyone who intends to violate etiquette should have studied it beforehand.”