THE L
G a C y OF VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
Amrit Virdi looks back at the legacy of Dame Vivienne Westwood after her tragic passing in December. You’d have to have been living under a rock to be unbeknown to the impact of legendary British designer Dame Vivienne Westwood. Being a pioneer in merging together fashion and punk music in the new wave era, her work has been celebrated across the world by consumers and designers alike. Dame Westwood studied jewellery and silversmith at the University of Westminster, and was previously a primary school teacher before venturing into fashion. It is clear that she came from humble beginnings and gained her notoriety through hard work, selling her own jewellery at a Portobello Road stall and making her own wedding dress for her first wedding in 1962. A pivotal moment which, in a sense, defined the trajectory of Dame Westwood’s career was her collaboration with renowned band Sex Pistols, who brought Vivienne’s designs to public attention as they were styled in them. Her second husband Malcolm McLaren was the manager of the punk band. With the Sex Pistols becoming a key statement of the 1970s wave of punk fashion, McLaren and Westwood capitalised upon this growing trend by opening SEX, a boutique that defined fashion in the punk movement in 1971, which was eventually renamed as Worlds End in 1979. Here, Vivienne sold graphic tees donning controversial words and symbols and bondage trousers, as well as plenty of leather and biker zips— a far cry from the colourful disco fashion that was in the spotlight at the time. In terms of the punk scene, Dame Westwood’s legacy to this current day is undeniable. SEX and her punk designs
Image Mattia Passeri via Wikimedia Commons
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gave people who may have felt like ‘outcasts’ in everyday life a place to meet, congregate, and find fashion they resonated with. Though some criticised the frayed edges and slashes in clothes that made them look ‘unfinished’, it represented something more— a rebelling against societal norms of what fashion should be. Dame Westwood classed her designs as being independent, and she did not stay defined to the punk realm. Vivienne held her first official collaborative catwalk show with McLaren in 1981, embracing a romantic style which still lives on in the fashions of Rick Owens
and Matty Bovan. Vivienne used it as a way to express her love of colour and advance her designs to not being limited to the traditional punk realm, coinciding with Richard Buckley’s observation of punk taking a more light-hearted stance at this time. The New Romantic look, embodied in the Pirate collection which was showcased in 1981, was flamboyant and bold, breaking even more barriers as it was also partly inspired by Native American patterns. Eye-catching stripes and swirls, baggy trousers, oversized shirts, and pirate-style hats embodied the collection, along with golds,
