Vivienne Westwood

Westwood, who was also awarded damehood by the late Queen Elizabeth II, was born April 8, 1941.

The pioneer who brought punk-inspired creations to the mainstream has died aged 81.

As well as climate change, Westwood became a vocal supporter for the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is fighting extradition to the US to face charges under the Espionage Act. I am grateful for the moments I got to share with you and Andreas." They shot to fame in 1976 wearing Westwood and McLaren's designs. The Victoria and Albert Museum, which houses some of her works, described Westwood as a "true revolutionary and rebellious force in fashion". Singer Boy George, who first met Westwood in the early 1980s, called her "great and inspiring" and "without question she is the undisputed Queen of British fashion". Westwood made her name with her controversial punk and new wave styles in the 1970s and went on to dress some of the biggest stars in fashion.

In a Twitter statement on Thursday, Westwood's fashion house confirmed the designer died "peacefully and surrounded" by family.

"She led an amazing life," the statement said. Thank you darling." Whereas the band and others like them helped spread the punk lifestyle, Westwood's work had a profound impact on the subculture's aesthetic. It was so influential from the mid-70s." Her runway looks included corset tops, ruffled plaid, strong catchphrases, and striking animal prints. She first worked as an elementary school teacher.

Art, Anarchy and the Avant-Garde · Sex Pistols · Johnny Rotten in 1976 · Punk Fashions · Boy Geroge at Vivienne Westwood Tribute Event in 1998 · Paris Fashion Week ...

British fashion designer and style icon Vivienne Westwood has died aged 81. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family, at her home in London on ...

The Vivienne Foundation, a not-for-profit company, founded by Westwood, her sons & granddaughter in late 2022, will officially launch next year. Westwood was an outspoken advocate for the planet, often promoting quality over quantity when it came to fashion consumption. Westwood was the only woman, the only Brit, and the only designer on his list who was not already a multi-million-dollar brand. And on Twitter, singer Boy George [wrote](https://twitter.com/boygeorge/status/1608589986663636992?s=46&t=tMddMm_UZ3Ynm0xkMkYFRA)"R.I.P. [wrote](https://www.instagram.com/p/CmxYbJzvmgW/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=), "I will forever be grateful to have been in your orbit, because to me and most, in fashion and humanity, you, Vivienne, were the sun." To the fashion world she was a beloved character who energized and pushed the boundaries of the industry until her death. In his view, she was one of the six most influential designers of the 20th century, along with Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio Armani, Christian Lacroix and Emanuel Ungaro. (In 1989, she was still living in an ex-council flat in South London and was "virtually bankrupt," according to Jane Mulvagh's 1998 biography, "Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life." In 1992, Westwood married an Austrian design student, Andreas Kronthaler, 25 years her junior. She twirled sans culottes for photographers after receiving her Order of the British Empire from the Queen in 1992. "It changed the way people looked," Westwood told Time magazine in 2012. Her mother worked as a weaver at local cotton mills; her father came from a family of shoemakers.

'She was always trying to reinvent fashion,' said Andrew Bolton, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

“Fashion can be so boring,” she told The Associated Press at a 2010 fashion show. In particular, one of Westwood’s most notorious designs depicted a swastika and an upside-down caricature of a crucified Jesus Christ with the word “Destroy”. Westwood later clarified in an autobiography written in collaboration with Ian Kelly that the clothing design was intended to be a political statement against the dangers of fascism. Westwood also designed the dress Assange’s wife, Stella Moris, wore at the [couple’s prison wedding](/news/2021/11/12/assange-gets-permission-to-marry-in-uk-prison) in London this past March. “Love you Viv.” In the 1960s, Westwood met Sex Pistols manager and one-time partner Malcolm McLaren. She was globally known for her extravagant fashion shows and for bringing the punk aesthetic into the mainstream. The company said the British fashion icon died “peacefully and surrounded by her family” in South London. It’s very much rooted in the English tradition of pastiche and irony and satire. Westwood was largely self-taught and did not possess any form of fashion training. The punk movement has never dissipated – it’s become part of our fashion vocabulary.” It was so influential from the mid-70s.

(FILES) In this file photo taken on June 12, 2017 British designer Vivienne Westwood reacts as she talks discusses her catwalk show at before displaying her ...

“We saw it as a question of youth against age. “Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. By the 2000s, she was a full-fledged celebrity — designing wedding dresses not just for the elite, but for iconic TV characters including Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City” and even Miss Piggy. “Her punk style rewrote the rule book in the 1970s and (she) was widely admired for how she stayed true to her own values throughout her life,” she wrote on Twitter. And she held on to her edge even as she was embraced by the establishment, thanks largely to her energetic activism for environmental causes. In a statement quoted by the PA news agency, her husband and creative partner Andreas Kronthaler said: “We have been working until the end and she has given me plenty of things to get on with.

She died on Thursday in Clapham, South London, Westwood's company confirmed. In a tweet, the official brand account wrote: “ ...

Many of these ornate elements can be seen in one of Westwood’s most recognizable pieces: the “Sex and the City” wedding dress. The gold and ivory multi-layered bridal gown was worn by star Sarah Jessica Parker for the 2008 film — and was worn when Parker, as Carrie Bradshaw, was left at the altar. Westwood’s impact on punk is widely acknowledged, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s Costume Institute going so far as to call her the “Mother of Punk.”

No fashion designer ever had a Paris show like the one staged by Vivienne Westwood in 1991. Although she was by then 50 and had been making clothes for sale ...

Westwood accepted an offer of management from the fashion PR Carlo D’Amario, and they travelled to Italy to seek backing for a label of her own. With introductions from rag trade friends, she moved incrementally into bank loans and business funding to pay off the debts of Worlds End, and to buy rather than rent her second shop, in Davies Street, Mayfair. Westwood’s politics, unstoppably advocated, were anti-establishment, whatever the current establishment might be, and settled in the direction of Green party-pro-environmentalism, although there were problems over her company’s tax-related fine for undervaluing its assets, and its corporate tax wriggles. The Harris tweed, tartan and barathea of her collection of 1987, again sewn in the flat, recalled Glossop’s stout wool stuffs, respecting tradition yet radically cut. Westwood was discovering that her work was known, and admired, more outside Britain than in it. She returned to her parents, and began to make jewellery for a stall in Portobello Road. These she printed with slogans and lewd images, gay and straight; she distressed and adorned them, dyed them in her bath and stitched on chicken bones boiled clean in the kitchen. Its next incarnation was as SEX, in 1974, with Westwood sourcing its stock of rubber fetish-wear through the pages of Exchange & Mart. Her father was a factory worker; her mother had been in the mills and appreciated a length of good wool worsted – although everything was in short supply during Viv’s childhood. She became a primary school teacher and in 1962 married Derek Westwood, a toolmaker with ambitions, which he achieved, to be an airline pilot. She was born in Tintwistle, just outside the mill town of Glossop, Derbyshire, the daughter of Dora (nee Ball) and Gordon Swire. No fashion designer ever had a Paris show like the one staged by Vivienne Westwood in 1991.

Vivienne Westwood, the British-born controversial fashion designer, turned outspoken activist, died at 81. Westwood's death was announced on Friday by her fashion house, Haute Couture, who confirmed that the British fashion icon died peacefully, ...

I’m trying to find something else to do,” she told The Associated Press at a 2010 fashion show. Westwood told Time Magazine in 2009 that she did not regret the contentious piece.“I don’t, because we were just saying to the older generation, ‘We don’t accept your values or your taboos, and you’re all fascists,’” Westwood said. In particular, one of Westwood’s most notorious designs depicted a swastika and an upside-down caricature of a crucified Jesus Christ with the word “Destroy.” The shop, which at one time was named “SEX,” was fined in 1975 for “indecent exhibition” allegations. She was globally known for her extravagant fashion shows and for bringing the punk aesthetic into the mainstream. designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better.

Alongside then-partner and Sex Pistols band manager Malcolm McLaren, she established the look of punk in the mid-1970s. And in so doing, she also changed ...

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Vivienne Westwood helped create the punk movement as we know it with her provocative designs,. Credit: Andy Hosie/Mirrorpix/Getty ...

[CBS Sunday Morning](https://youtu.be/PVmPQh79Bto)and was named Dame Commander of the British Empire. Contemporary designers are still inspired by the punk scene Westwood helped shape, drawing on the "distressed" look and incorporating tartan and safety pins. Westwood went on to become one of the UK's most celebrated designers, beloved by the mainstream industry she once wanted to repel. "But for somebody my age to think that it's got any credibility in any way -- no it hasn't." It's where Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and friends hung out and where the band [auditioned a green-haired outcast](https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/an-illustrated-history-of-the-sex-pistols-40617/)named John Lydon, better known to many as Johnny Rotten, as its lead singer. Westwood said years later that she didn't want to be a designer but made clothes out of necessity in her teens and when she was asked by McLaren to outfit the new band he was managing, the Sex Pistols. But when the mainstream got its hands on Westwood's punk designs, many of them were uninterested in punk's radical political underpinnings. Disenchanted, Westwood built her eponymous line and split from McLaren. it was just a fashion that became a marketing opportunity for people," she said. When the Sex Pistols' single "God Save the Queen" was banned from British radio, Westwood She was influenced by leather-clad bikers and But before she dressed supermodels and constructed romantic corsets, she ripped up fashion's rule book for a new generation of disillusioned changemakers.

Vivienne Westwood, iconic fashion designer, died Thursday at age 81. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Ian Kelly, the co-author of Vivienne Westwood's memoir, ...

And - but it was typical of Vivienne because, you know, she was very proud of her - I guess that was the OBE and then her damehood from the queen. I mean, you know, she was cycling to work in London, you know, every day on platform heels all the way through her 70s and working, you know, right to the end. And she was fascinating to be around in that regard 'cause she was, you know, the most curious person I've ever met, in both senses of the word - so interested in everything but also, you know, kind of eccentric. But the look - well, yeah, I suppose you'd characterize it, as you mentioned, with an idea of the semi-destroyed, the punk look that addressed a lot of sort of ideas from contemporary art then of sticking things onto things, safety pins and the like that have become mainstream, the deconstruction of clothes so that you notice, to an extent, how they are made, rather in the ways they were experimenting with modern architecture at the same time. You could date to her the platform shoe, the modern corset, the idea of, you know, underwear as outerwear. She was 81 and widely respected as one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century.