Vivienne Westwood is a British fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.
Westwood was deeply interested in the punk fashion phenomenon of the 1970s, saying "I was messianic about punk, seeing if one could put a spoke in the system in some way". The "punk style" included BDSM fashion, bondage gear, safety pins, razor blades, bicycle or lavatory chains on clothing and spiked dog collars for jewellery, as well as outrageous make-up and hair. Essential design elements include the adoption of traditional elements of Scottish design such as tartan fabric. Amongst the more unusual elements of her style is the use of historical 17th and 18th century cloth cutting principles, and reinterpreting these in, for instance, radical cutting lines to men's trousers.
• Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in Glossop, Derbyshire, on April 8, 1941
• She began designing clothes in 1971 with the opening of her first shop, Let It Rock, at 430 King's Road. In 1974 it was renamed Sex
• In 1976, with her then lover and business partner, Malcolm McLaren, they dressed the Sex Pistols
• In 1981, Westwood showed her first seminal collection in London, entitled Pirate
• In 1990, Westwood launched a menswear collection in Florence. She was named British Designer of the Year that year, as well as in 1991
• In 1998 she won the Queen's Export Award
• In 2007 she was awarded the gong for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design at the British Fashion Awards - but she was late on to the stage to collect it since she'd popped out to go to the loo
Explaining the roots of her beliefs she said: "When I was a schoolgirl my history teacher, Mr. Scott, spoke with pride of civilisation and democracy. The hatred of arbitrary arrest by the lettres de cachet of the French monarchy caused the storming of the Bastille. We can only take democracy for granted if we insist on our liberty."
info at Vogue UK
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