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Vivienne Westwood

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Dame Vivienne Westwood DBE RDI
File:Vivienne Westwood by Mattia Passeri.JPG
Born (1941-04-08) April 8, 1941 (age 83)

Tintwistle, Cheshire
NationalityEngland English
EducationUniversity of Westminster
Middlesex University
Goldsmiths, University of London
LabelVivienne Westwood
AwardsBritish Fashion Designer of the year 1990, 1991, 2006.

Dame Vivienne Westwood, DBE, RDI, (born 8 April, 1941) is an English fashion designer largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream[1].

She is linked with the Sex Pistols via Malcolm McLaren and their SEX/Seditionaries boutique on Kings Road, Chelsea in London during the 1970s. The shop was at 430 Kings Road.

Biography

Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in the village of Tintwistle in Glossop, Cheshire (now in the county of Derbyshire) on April 8 1941, daughter of Dora (Ball) and Gordon Swire, a storekeeper.[2] She studied at the Harrow School of Art (later to become the University of Westminster) for one term. Vivienne went on to attend Trent Park College (later to become the Middlesex University) and later taught at a primary school in North London. She loved teaching.

Vivienne's first husband was Derek Westwood, with whom she had one child, Ben. Their marriage lasted three years. She then met Malcolm McLaren, later known for being the manager for punk band The Sex Pistols. The two lived in a council flat in Clapham and had a son named Joseph. Westwood continued to teach until 1971, when Malcolm decided to open a shop, Let It Rock (also known as Sex, Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, Seditionaries) where Westwood began to sell her outrageous designs. During this period, Westwood, McLaren, and artist Jamie Reid were influenced by the Situationists. She still owns the shop, which is at 430 King's Road, and sells her Anglomania label from there. The shop is now known as World's End.

The punk style began to gain notoriety when the Sex Pistols wore clothes from Westwood and McLaren's shop at their first gig. The "punk style" included BDSM fashion, bondage gear, safety pins, razor blades, bicycle or lavatory chains on clothing and spiked dog collars that were used as jewellery, as well as outrageous make-up and hair.

The inclusion of more traditional elements of British design, such as tartan fabric, amongst the more unusual elements of her style only served to make the overall effect of her designs more shocking.

Together, Westwood and McLaren revolutionised fashion, and the impact is still felt today. She has only a few exclusive shops, including three in London, two in Manchester, and one each in Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds. A ninth opened in FH Mall, Nottingham on 20th March 2008. Westwood worked historical factors into her collection by using historical 17th-18th century original cutting principles and modernising them. This collection was about 'gold and treasure, adventure and exploration'. Other influences in Westwood's work have included ethnic Peruvian influence, feminine figure, velvet and knitwear. A historical influence has always shown in her work.

In December 2003, she and the Wedgwood pottery company launched a series of tea sets featuring her designs.

Westwood has always been loved by her friends and family, and is by her friends and family known as a loving, caring person. She is the godmother of highfashion model and socialite lady Elissa Spencer-Wilhelmsen Ainsworth, and was the one who discovered designer Rosamund Jacqueline Lodge who happens to be Lady Elissa's soon to be sister in law, set to marry lord Philip Spencer-Wilhelmsen Ainsworth this summer. Westwood has designed the wedding dress together with the bride, and is attending the wedding along with her sons as a normal guest.

The first major retrospective of her work was shown in 2004-2005 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the National Gallery of Australia. The exhibition is made up of around 145 complete outfits, grouped into the themes which have dominated her work from the early 1970s to the present day and were drawn from her own personal archive and the V&A's extensive collection. They range from early Punk garments to glamorous 'historical' evening gowns. The retrospective is touring the world and is set to continue until 2008.

In September 2005, Westwood joined forces with the British civil rights group Liberty and launched exclusive limited design T-shirts and baby wear bearing the slogan I AM NOT A TERRORIST, please don't arrest me. Westwood said she was supporting the campaign and defending habeas corpus. "When I was a schoolgirl my history teacher, Mr. Scott, began to take classes in civic affairs. The first thing he explained to us was the fundamental rule of law embodied in habeas corpus. He 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", she said.[3] The sale of the £50 T-shirts raised funds for the organisation. Dame Vivienne has recently stated on television that she has transferred her long standing support for the Labour Party to the Conservative Party, over the issues of civil liberties and human rights.

Her Autumn/Winter 2005/06 Propaganda Collection drew inspiration from her archive, reinterpreting designs using Wolford’s exclusive knitting technology, who she has worked in close collaboration with since 2003. In 2006, collaborated with Nine West. These shoes are not designed directly by Westwood, however, the Nine West brand name shares its label with Westwood.

Westwood accepted a DBE in the 2006 New Year's Honours List "for services to fashion", and has thrice earned the award for British Designer of the Year.

In May 2006, Westwood wrote a poem and provided personal photographs eulogising Swallows Wood, a Nature Reserve near Tintwistle where she was born and grew up. The Reserve is threatened with destruction by the construction of the Longdendale Bypass.

Vivienne Westwood has spent much of 2007 designing new graduation gowns for King's College London, which will be conferring its own degrees for the first time in summer 2008.

In 2007 Glossopdale Community College named one of its newly created houses, Westwood, after Vivienne.

Throughout her career, Westwood has been influential in launching the careers of other designers into the British fashion industry. Most notably, she employed the services of Patrick Cox to design shoes for her "Clint Eastwood" collection in 1984. The result was a prototype of the nine inch heeled shoes in which supermodel Naomi Campbell famously fell during a Westwood fashion show in Paris in 1994.

Westwood is also widely known as a political activist. On Easter Sunday 2008, she campaigned in person at the biggest Campaign for Nuclear disarmament demonstration in ten years, at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston in Berkshire, UK.[4]

Children

  • Ben Westwood, son of Vivienne and Derek Westwood, is a photographer of erotica.
  • Joseph Corre, son of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, founder of lingerie brand Agent Provocateur.

Controversy

Notorious for going knicker-less, she caused a stir in 1992 when she came to collect the OBE, and twirled to reveal all. After being made a Dame in 2006 by the Prince of Wales she disclosed that she was knicker-less again. [5]

A known anti-hat campaigner, Westwood has most recently designed a mortarboardless graduation ensemble for Kings College, London; much to the chagrin of those students who had selected to receive their degree award from the institution rather than the University of London.

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/vivw/hd_vivw.htm
  2. ^ Family detective - Telegraph
  3. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4287446.stm
  4. ^ http://www.vogue.co.uk/vogue_daily/story/story.asp?stid=51620&date=&sid=
  5. ^ "Vivienne Westwood collects royal honour wearing no knickers - again".
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