3 minute read
THE ART OF REBELLION tribute to Vivienne Westwood
Yhishara
Vivienne Swire was born in Tintwistle, Derbyshire, England, two years after World War II began. When she was 17, she and her family relocated to Harrow, Greater London, where she enrolled in the University of Westminster. Intending to take jewelry and silversmithing classes, she soon felt those skills needed to be more practical. Instead, she chose to become a teacher, a socially acceptable career choice for a young woman. Four years later, she met Derek Westwood and fulfilled other socially acceptable pursuits for a woman: marriage and having a baby. In all ways, she was conforming to what society demanded. However, there was one small problem: Vivienne was not a traditional woman.
In exciting London, it wasn’t long before she met others with non-traditional mindsets, including Malcolm McLaren, with whom she began romantic and business partnerships. She soon divorced, became a single mother, and started selling her jewelry. They collaborated on several collections: Pirate, Savages, Buffalo/ Nostalgia of Mud, Punkature, Witches, and World’s End (1984), with the last one being Clint Eastwood. The collections were shown in Paris and London from 1981 to 1985.
They were a tour de force when revolutionizing fashion for those seeking to rebel. To sell their designs, they took over a shop that became punk central, where those involved in the culture met up to find great clothes and network with those who were interested in the music. One such group was the Sex Pistols, which Malcolm managed, and Vivienne designed the costumes.
During this time, their romantic partnership ended. Badly. In one interview, she recalls that Malcolm had suggested that she was “just the seamstress” in the business and that she should release a collection under her name – leaving him out of it. Perhaps Vivienne took it as a challenge – to succeed where he wished she would fail. If that was the case, how wrong he was! Vivienne became one of the biggest names in fashion for her fresh takes on old designs, such as the crinoline cut short to mid-thigh and dubbed the “mini-crini.” She was sought after by people like Richard Branson to design uniforms for Virgin Atlantic and asked to design the academic dresses for degree earners at King’s College by Patricia Rawlings (then Chairperson of the college). She has designed for royalty and the financial elite and dressed some of the most renowned models of the last several decades: Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss being just two of them. She was even made a Dame of the British Empire.
But being a fashion maven was only part of the passions of this incredible woman. She was determined to be a force for change. She found that two things gave her opportunities to do that: education and activism.
She took public stands for nuclear disarmament, animal welfare, civil liberties, and vegetarianism against fracking, capitalism, and overconsumption. While it seems contradictory, considering being the head of an haute couture fashion house, she had made positive changes to offset the impact creating her clothing and accessories has on the world. These positive changes impact every part of the production, from sourcing to creation to packaging to shipping to backend support such as banking, investments, and employee benefits. While her business side wanted people to buy her pieces, she adopted the company philosophy of “Buy Less, Choose Well, Makes it Last.”
She was also passionate about education, and that philosophy was present in her design and private lives. She once said, “The more you know, the more you know what hasn’t been done. The more you know how you can manipulate things. The more you know, the kind of story things will tell you, the feeling they have.” As unbelievable as it may sound, she sometimes was bored of fashion, and it was those potential stories she could tell with a stitch, a fabric choice, a style that kept her interested. She also felt that it was her purpose in life to understand the world. She did that by being a voracious reader, and her incentive to “finish this pair of trousers” was that she could then read her book.
“I want to understand the world I live in so that by the time I die, I’m less stupid than I am now. I mean, that’s what life’s about.” Enjoy the book, Vivienne.
