God Save The Queen Of Punk

We always knew Vivienne Westwood was a badass. Yes, we always knew, we always liked her, and we always secretly wanted to be her. We were doing a bit of research and found more irre­sistibly fas­ci­nat­ing facts about this 69-year-old fash­ion rebel turned design world icon. For exam­ple, did you know that she mar­ried her for­mer stu­dent, a hand­some young 25-year-old Austrian man when she was 50? Yes 50, that’s twice his senior. And did we men­tion handsome?

A woman of many titles, the Queen of Punk, three times the British Designer of the Year, and in 2006 Dame by the Prince of Wales, Westwood broke out onto the fash­ion scene dur­ing the birth of punk in early sev­en­ties London. Westwood was a crit­i­cal influ­ence on the punk move­ment in England as her sec­ond hus­band Malcom McLaren was the Sex Pistols’ first man­ager. The Sex Pistols wore her edgy designs on stage and shopped in her and her husband’s leg­endary bou­tique SEX in London’s Chelsea dis­trict (which is to this day still owned by Westwood and now known as World’s End).

In Dame Westwood’s early years as a cloth­ing designer, she took a great deal of inspi­ra­tion from bik­ers, fetishists, and pros­ti­tutes, cre­at­ing raw, very punk rock appro­pri­ate gar­ments. She and McLaren worked together to cul­ti­vate a look that would have a last­ing impact on the punk scene. Bondage gear, Scottish tar­tan fab­ric, and safety pins are just a few of the ele­ments incor­po­rated into Westwood’s designs that have been embed­ded into our cul­ture as iconic punk styles.

Pirates was Westwood’s first run­way show, as a col­lab­o­ra­tion with McLaren in 1981. It was at this time you started to see Vivienne’s sig­na­ture style start to take form. Vivienne looked to the past for inspi­ra­tion and incor­po­rated 18th cen­tury drap­ing and pat­tern mak­ing in the gar­ments. Historical roman­ti­cism then became a promi­nent theme in all of her future collections.

After a few years of  sell­ing her col­lec­tions in hers and McLaren’s London shop, Westwood got picked up by Armani to launch her own label. Shortly after, she and McLaren broke up. Then on her own, she allowed her­self to exper­i­ment with new tech­niques and styles, dig­ging deeper into his­tor­i­cal cos­tume for influ­ence. Undergarments and struc­ture become a focus of hers as well, as she pio­neered the Underwear As Outerwear move­ment with corsets and crinolines.

Through the last four decades, Vivienne Westwood has con­tin­ued to shock and inspire awe in the fash­ion world with her bound­ary push­ing designs and bold per­son­al­ity. She is not afraid to take risks pro­fes­sion­ally and doesn’t think twice about speak­ing her mind. Some of her run­way shows have had very clear, and at times, quite con­tro­ver­sial polit­i­cal mes­sages, includ­ing the debut of her Red Label col­lec­tion in 2008, where the mod­els held signs with slo­gans like “Justice for the Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.”

Vivienne was asked to be a part of the first Sex And The City movie– she designed Carrie’s wed­ding dress. At the pre­mier,  she left after only ten min­utes, claim­ing “I thought Sex And The City was sup­posed to be about cutting-edge fash­ion and there was noth­ing remotely mem­o­rable or inter­est­ing about what I saw.” Ouch! We wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiv­ing end of that com­ment, how­ever we find her bru­tal hon­esty rather refreshing.

Vivienne Westwood is oper­at­ing four fash­ion lines under her com­mand: Gold Label (semi-couture), Red Label (ready-to-wear), Westwood Man, and Anglomania (dif­fu­sion line). Over the course of her career, she has cre­ated an empire of VW branded prod­ucts, con­sist­ing of col­lab­o­ra­tions with many com­pa­nies in count­less fields. In 2001, she worked with Wedgwood and designed a col­lec­tion of tea sets. Most recently, she designed lim­ited edi­tion table­cloths for the eco-charity Cool Earth. Other col­lab­o­ra­tions include rugs and pil­lows for The Rug Company, wall­pa­per for Cole and Son, eco friendly shoes for Melissa Shoes, a shoe col­lec­tion for Nine West, a denim col­lec­tion for Lee Jeans, and a sofa col­lec­tion for Molteni & C.

With all of those busi­ness part­ner­ships to keep up, design­ing bound­ary push­ing, trend­set­ting fash­ion col­lec­tions mul­ti­ple times a year, and keep­ing up that trade­mark tan­ger­ine hair color, we don’t know how she has the energy to get up and make her­self a cup of tea in the morn­ing. To do all of this at 69, we guess it’s true, stay­ing active keeps you young. We just can’t get enough of this chick.

One more irre­sistibly fas­ci­nat­ing fact about the Queen of Punk: When she was titled Dame in 1992 and was awarded her Order from the British Empire at Buckingham Palace, she spun around in her dress for a pho­tog­ra­pher and flashed him, and she was as they say in England, knick­er­less.

Katherine Tyznik.HighStreet.New York