Her Story So Far This editorial offers an inside look at the famed designers humble beginnings all the way to the present day A magazine by Tylar Kraychy FM-D Student Blanche Macdonald
reerac noihsaf
Vivienne Westwood
Biography Vivienne was born Vivienne Isabel Swire on April 8th, 1941 in Glossop, Derbyshire. Her father was a cobbler, and her mother worked at a local cotton mill. At age 17, the family moved to Harrow, where Vivienne found work at a local factory, eventually enrolling at a teacher training school. According to Vivienne, her early years did not consist of much art or culture.
Westwood married Derek Westwood, with whom she had a son named Ben, and was working as a teacher by the early 1960s. But soon she met Malcolm Mclaren, who would “rescue” Vivienne from “pushing that pram”. Mclaren was an art student and would become the manager of the Sex Pistols. They had a second son together, Joseph. Mclaren introduced Vivienne to a new world of creative freedom and art intertwined with politics and activism.
Vivienne began designing in 1971, along with Malcom and together they filled Mclaren’s boutique shop at 430 Kings Road in London with Vivenne’s designs. The shop went through many changes through the years, as the designs and ideas changed, so did the name of the shop. The boutique operated under the names, Let it Rock, Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die, Sex and Seditionaires and eventually being reinvented as Worlds End in 1979. The shop was an important part of the punk movement in fashion, particularly during the Sex and Seditionaries phase. Vivienne also dressed the Sex Pistols with her designs, helping to define the bands identity.
For Autumn/Winter 1981, Vivienne showed her first catwalk presentation, entitled Pirate, at Olympia in London. Turning to Saville Row tailoring techniques, British fabrics such as Tartan, and inspiration from the 17th and 18th century. Other collections following include Savage, Buffalo Girls, New Romantics and The Pagan Years. In 1989, she met who would become her lifelong partner in romance and design, Andreas Kronthaler, who is also Creative Director for the brand. Together, they still design collections every year.
World's End In 1971, Trevor Myles, owner of Paradise Garage, a boutique located at 430 Kings Road, rented the back of his store to Vivienne Westwood, then a primary school teacher, and her boyfriend Malcolm McLaren, a recent art school drop-out. Worlds End is the original Vivienne Westwood boutique, formerly known as; Let it Rock, Sex, Seditionaries, and Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die.
The shop is still located at 430 Kings Road in Chelsea, London. It was established in 1971, as a place for Vivienne and Malcolm Mclaren to showcase their ideas and designs and make various socio-political statements.
The name of the shop and the decor changed to suit new evolution of ideas.
Let It Rock
Westwood and McLaren were interested in 50s rock n roll as opposed to the glam rock pop taking over at the time. They began selling rock ‘n’ roll records and kitsch memorabilia from their back room marketplace. In 1971, they took over the lease of the store painting the Chuck Berry song title Let it Rock onto a black corrugated façade in fluorescent pink letters. They furnished the store like a 50s living room, with porno mags, and began selling brothel creepers and zoot suits finished with velvet by the tailor Sid Green, as inspired by Teddy Boy revivalists.
Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die
Westwood and McLaren renamed the shop in1972, calling it Too Fast to Live Too Young Too Young to Die, an epithet worn on the motorcycle jackets of American bikers, to honour the death of James Dean. The façade donned a skull and crossbones, shying away from the nostalgic escapism of the previous 50s style store. The style this time is more rebellious rocker, decked out with a jukebox, Odeon wallpaper and posters of Billy Fury.
SEX
Easily the most famous iteration of the store, SEX was a backlash against all things retail. The windows—like those of an actual fetish shop—were opaque, forcing those interested to physically walk inside in order to even know what was for sale. The store’s interior had been covered with a spongy womb, the walls splattered with anarchic and phallic graffiti and displaying whips, chains and puckered rubber skirts. SEX was presided over by the punk icon Jordan, clad in bondage gear and Mondrian style make-up. Bella Freud, Chrissie Hynde and Alan Jones all worked there as shop assistants. Jones was arrested for public indecency after wearing a provocative Westwood T-shirt of two Cowboys exposing their penises down the Kings Road.
Seditionaries
Seditionaries was the ultimate rejection of West End consumerism, a topic that McLaren had explored in his unfinished 1970 film Oxford Street. Vivienne had a shirt listing "hates" and "non-hates, one of the hates being West End consumerism. The design of the shop during this time was intense and according to architect and designer David Connor, “you had to be really brave to go through the door.” There was white glass in the window so you couldn't see inside, and some people even thought it was a betting shop.
The zips and buckles of Westwood’s bondage trousers were really suggestive and fetishistic, bringing clothes for sex to the street. The DIY punk movement evolved, as people would make their own seditionaries inspired item out of sink plungers, pugs and chains and mix them with original items.
Worlds End
“ With a slanted floor like the galleon of a ship and a façade featuring a 13-hour clock ticking backwards, the store reflected the whimsy and historicism of Westwood’s A/W81 Pirates collection, the first to be sold in its new iteration. “Originally I came up with this idea that you’d walk through two sheets of glass filled with smoke at the entrance, like a dream sequence in a film, but we realised all the smoke would go up the Kings Road,” he explains. “The sloping floor really challenged the horizontal… The shop assistants actually got bad backs from working on the slope, so we had to put a flat section behind the cash till.”
In 1984, Vivienne and Malcolm split, and the shop was closed. It reopened in 1986, and still operates today, selling Gold Label pieces and archive pieces.
Pirate Collection The Pirate Collection, shown in 1981, was Vivienne's first catwalk show. Vivienne began looking at history for ideas and techniques, ensuring she was getting accurate inspiration. She looked into museums and books for costume patterns. One of the first Pirate garments was the billowing unisex shirt. Vivienne was interested in what people historically found sexually attractive and used this knowledge in her designs.
The Pirate collection was unisex, offering a romantic look for the times. Rather than conforming to the masculine, fitted look of the early 80s, the collection offered a different more tattered, ragged look, with flat shoes and layering. The collection was absorbed into mainstream fashion immediately, evoking the age ofage of "highwaymen, dandies and buccaneers". The collection featured loose-bottomed, widestriped Bucaneer trousers, and oversized shirts worn with draped sashes. Quickly, the New Romantic style became influential through musical acts such as Boy George wearing it in clubs. The influence remains evident in the fashion scene today. For Westwood, Pirate was about a metaphorical escape from an island.
Harris Tweed (AW87/88) Named after the woollen fabric hand-woven in the Western Isles of Scotland, Harris Tweed was Vivienne's first collection shown in 2 and a half years, accompanied by classical music and tradtional brass bands.
Featuring thorn-proof tweeds, gabardines and knits surely suited to Britain’s unbearable weather. She paid homage to the tailoring traditions of Savile Row. Accessories included Rocking Horse platform shoes, same as the Mini Crini collection 1985, pearly queen hats and tweed crowns. Westwood was evolving from punks and ragamuffins to the cheeky ‘Tatler’ girls wearing clothes that parodied the upper-class English.
“My whole idea for this collection was stolen from a little girl I saw on the tube one day. She couldn’t have been more than 14. She had a little plaited bun, a Harris Tweed jacket and a bag with a pair of ballet shoes in it. She looked so cool and composed, standing there. Everyone around her was being noisy and rowdy, but she looked quite serene. She looked lovely.” - Vivenne.
Iconic Runway Moments Anglomania AW93/93 - Naomi Campbell Born out of a dialogue between the styles of France and England, Vivienne combined elegant British tailoring with the French love of exaggerated proportions to create a new aesthetic. This collection mixes tartan, furs, kilts, and puffy silhouettes. Vivienne's famous extreme platform gillie shoes nearly break Naomi Campbells ankles as she takes a tumble walking down the runway.
Cafe Society SS94 - Kate Moss Another collection with historical references with a twist, such as Elizabethan gowns and Victorian corsets and French rococo jackets. Sexuality, satire and breaking down historical conventions were all emphasized in this collection. Models donned powdered faces and pink-colored lips, licking ice cream and winking at each other. Models wore contrasting silhouettes, and some were topless wearing only a mini-crini and the iconic orb necklace. Kate Moss walking down the runway, bare breasted, in her mini-crini and licking a magnum bar was an iconic moment to remember.
Anglomania AW93/93 - Naomi Campbell
Cafe Society SS94 - Kate Moss
Activism Vivienne Westwood has long used her collections and catwalk shows as a platform to campaign for positive activism. She speaks out about the effects of climate change overconsumption and has garnered attention around ecological crusading. According to Vivienne: “It’s a war for the very existence of the human race. And that of the planet. The most important weapon we have is public opinion: go to art galleries, start to understand the world you live in. You're a freedom fighter as soon as you start doing that.” Vivienne implements slogans and political graphics into her designs, still managing to make them beautiful. She is now predominately an activist for climate change, nuclear disarmament and civil rights, especially that of freedom of speech.
Vivienne is a member and supporter of numerous activist organizations and continually makes an effort to speak out and make her statements. She is a self-proclaimed rebellion, using her platform and her passion for these causes as well as for fashion to communicate her messages.