Westwood just as punk as ever
Print Edition
GRANDE dame of fashion, co-founder of punk, outspoken campaigner — Vivienne Westwood has seen it all. But at 73, she wants to set the record straight.
The British designer’s authorized biography, published recently, gives her take on life with legendary Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who died in 2010.
“Vivienne Westwood” catalogues their dysfunctional relationship and creative partnership which, in the 1970s, helped shape the look and sound of the punk movement.
Using her own words and contributions by friends and family, biographer Ian Kelly charts how Westwood turned from revolutionary into the founder of a global fashion house.
Her eye for a striking image is a recurring theme but so too is her childlike enthusiasm, some would say fanaticism, for new ideas and social action through art.
Westwood still works full-time in fashion, aided by her second husband Andreas Kronthaler, who she met in 1989 when he was 23 and she was 48.
But she increasingly uses her wealth and public platform for her political and environmental campaigns.
“Ideas make me happy,” she said.
Westwood’s legend began with McLaren, who she met in 1965 when she was 25 and he was 20.
In 1971 they opened their shop at 430 King’s Road. Let It Rock, later Sex, was a scandalous source of fetish wear and strange looks that attracted everyone from Chrissie Hynde to Iggy Pop, Adam Ant and Charles Saatchi.
It was from the shop that McLaren put together the Sex Pistols, the band which gave voice to Britain’s disenchanted youth and which rocked the establishment with the release of “God Save the Queen” in 1977.
Punk is still known as much for its look — the ripped T-shirts, printed slogans and spiky hair — as its music.
The book argues that Westwood should receive most of the credit for this, designing the clothes and sewing them herself in their flat in Clapham.
For years she lived in the shadow of her partner, who once described her as his “seamstress.”
McLaren “had this thing where he couldn’t leave the flat until he’d done that, until he had made me cry,” Westwood recalled.
She said it was “simpler to give in, to give way to the tears so he would stop. Real tears have never come back.”
Asked why she stayed in the relationship, which occasionally turned violent, Westwood said simply: “I liked his ideas, and the journey of discovery he was on I wanted to join.”
Eventually his temper and his jealousy became boring.
Westwood and McLaren broke up in 1981 and she began designing alone.
Brought up among textile workers in Derbyshire, Westwood had always made clothes but had no formal training — she dropped out of art school after a few months and initially worked as a schoolteacher.
It’s still about ideas
She taught herself by taking apart old clothes to copy the patterns, and now makes sexy, bold garments recognizable by her use of tartans and tweeds and historical designs.
She has been credited with styles as varied as the introduction of the corset into modern clothing, the slogan printed T-shirt, the platform shoe, unisex fashion garments and wearing underwear as outerwear.
Now a grandmother, Westwood still uses her clout to promote campaigns to save the rainforest and free WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning.
“What I’m doing now, it still is punk — it’s still about shouting about injustice and making people think, even if it’s uncomfortable. I’ll always be a punk in that sense,” she said.
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