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There’s a memorable photograph of Dame Vivienne Westwood, her towering platform heels edging their means out of a gilded body, a portray come to life. It was a promotional stunt for the designer’s Swatch collaboration in 1992—and it feels just like the that almost all exemplifies her. After Westwood’s passing on Thursday, social media was rife with extra historically “punk” ry of Westwood, together with the no-underwear ensemble she wore to simply accept her OBE that very same 12 months. That’s truthful, provided that Westwood is the style determine most carefully related to the punk motion. She dressed the Intercourse Pistols and Bow Wow Wow’s Annabella Lwin throughout her relationship with each bands’ supervisor Malcolm McLaren, and introduced the music’s DIY spirit to her designs, festooning T-shirts with security pins and jackets with bondage straps.
However to cut back Westwood to a human anarchy image is to do her a disservice. Behind that punk edifice was a lady who knew sufficient about custom to shatter it. Whereas questioning empire, Westwood used a few of its hallmarks as her constructing blocks; combined in with the riot, there was reverence. By the ’80s, her references included Previous Grasp work, corsets, and crinolines (which she remodeled into the infamous “mini-crini”). After I met Westwood in particular person for the primary time, an expertise akin to seeing a historic determine come out of a museum-worthy body, she instantly recognized the costume I used to be sporting as being impressed by a Frans Hals portray. I quickly discovered that she was extra involved in speaking about Gainsborough than gossiping about vogue, and that she inspired design college students to repeat basic artistic endeavors as a part of their coaching.
There’s a motive her classic items nonetheless go viral, discovering followers in Bella Hadid, Dua Lipa, and FKA Twigs. Westwood’s work had virtually nothing to do with no matter present developments had been crowding the runway, however slightly along with her personal private obsessions. She was deep in Victorian and Regency vogue whereas others had been pushing bandage clothes. Her collections could possibly be impressed by pirates, witches, dandies, or the heroines of Watteau work. She discovered methods to make even the staidest of British standbys—tartan, Harris tweed, and Sloane Ranger garb—look subversive.
Westwood’s girls sported cleavage-spilling, cherubim-flecked corsets or teetered on chopines, however they all the time seemed fully in management. Her supermodel moments had been legendary: Carla Bruni went L’Origine du Monde mode in a fur G-string (Westwood would later resign fur). Kate Moss ate ice cream topless in a tricorn hat. Linda Evangelista swanned round in an 18th-century-style inexperienced robe. Naomi Campbell toppled from her sky-high heels, solely managing to turn into extra legendary within the course of.
Her mastery of tailoring (one thing she credited to her British background, telling me “I believe there’s one thing in your bones” while you’re an English designer) ensures that her items nonetheless flatter, shock, and shock. They really feel like items of vogue historical past, however fortunately, not the sort that must molder behind museum glass.
Maybe probably the most punk factor about Westwood was the way in which she approached vogue and politics. Earlier than the arrival of the designer-as-activist, she was warning us about local weather change, talking out towards fracking, supporting controversial figures like Julian Assange, and interesting in media-savvy stunts to attract consideration to her pet causes. And because the particular person on the helm of the uncommon woman-led, impartial model in vogue on the time, she was a feminist inspiration.
However, maybe in a gesture of English modesty, or one in all punk defiance, she was reluctant to simply accept any of those labels once I requested her about them onstage as she accepted the André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award from SCAD. To borrow the title of one in all her legendary retailer ideas, she was a seditionary to the tip. Our trade was one of many many issues she refused to take too significantly. As she mentioned that day, “I don’t fake vogue is a few holy factor.”
Supply: elle
