Vivienne Westwood obituary: remembering the ‘high priestess of punk fashion’

She had started talking about sustainability in fashion in the 1980s; in 2015, she drove a tank to the house of the then-PM David Cameron in a protest against fracking; and in 2020, aged 79, she was suspended in a 10ft-tall bird cage outside the Old Bailey to protest against the imprisonment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Early life

Vivienne Swire was born just outside Glossop, Derbyshire, in 1941. Her mother had worked in the woollen mills; her father in a factory. In her late teens, the family moved to Harrow, in north London, but she never lost her Derbyshire accent. She was already interested in fashion, but she wasn’t happy at Harrow School of Art, and left to train as a teacher.

In 1962, she married Derek Westwood, an apprentice at a Hoover factory (and later an airline pilot). They had a son, Ben, but she felt constrained by the marriage, and in 1965 she ended it. Soon after, she met McLaren, who was her brother’s flatmate. They started a relationship, and in 1967 had a son, Joe. McLaren was five years her junior, yet he became the first of the people she referred to as her “gurus”, said Jane Mulvagh in The Art Newspaper.

An autodidact, Westwood sought out “people from whom she could learn”. McLaren taught her about British street rebellion, French situationism, American pop culture. Her second guru, Gary Ness, a teacher from Canada, introduced her to the philosophy of Ancient Greece. Always in search of ideas, she researched her collections in art galleries and libraries; she gave her employees time off to visit exhibitions; and she campaigned for free access to museums. Her own favourite was The Wallace Collection in London.

Clothing from the Seditionaries included Sex Pistols ‘God Save The Queen’ T-shirts

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She and McLaren opened their boutique in 1971. Initially, it sold 1950s memorabilia, brothel creepers and zoot suits to a generation that was rejecting the hippy movement. Later, their bought-in stock was supplemented by T-shirts that Westwood dyed, distressed and adorned with slogans or boiled chicken bones at their small flat in Clapham. As their ideas evolved, they changed the shop’s name and its decor.

As Sex, it had rubber curtains and its walls were covered in womb-like pink foam, chicken wire and graffitied slogans. In late 1976, as punk was reaching its apogee, the shop changed name again and became Seditionaries, because, Westwood said, it was political like punk, and she wanted to “seduce people into revolt”.

Westwood and her husband Andreas Kronthaler in 2017

PATRICK KOVARIK / Staff

But by 1979, the year Sid Vicious died, punk was dead; it had been “a heroic attempt at confronting the establishment”, she said, “but ultimately it failed”. In 1980 the shop was renamed World’s End, and it was there that Westwood showcased her swaggering Pirates collection, designs from which were worn by members of Adam and the Ants and Duran Duran.

McLaren and Westwood split up soon after, said The Guardian. The 1980s were a lean decade financially, but in the 1990s, her Paris shows attracted Italian backers who realised that her designs – which dressed women “not as dreams or goddesses, but as heroes” – already had a following in Japan and was building another in China’s then very new market.

Global brand

Before long, Vivienne Westwood was a global brand. Meanwhile, she had found personal happiness with her Austrian husband and creative partner Andreas Kronthaler. They had met in the 1980s: she was teaching at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and he was her best student. For one project, he had created a shirt by stitching schnitzels together with black satin.

In 2014, he told Deborah Ross in The Times that he did not notice the 25-year age gap, but that it had started to scare him. “She has incredible stamina,” he said. “When we ride the bike I get to the top of the hill and then I look beside me and she has come to the top of the hill. But I know one day this will change. That is what frightens me, and this is why I must treasure every moment with her. I love her.”

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/arts-life/959164/vivienne-westwood-obituary-remembering-high-priestess-punk-fashion