British designer Vivienne Westwood, grand dame of provocative and eccentric fashion and inventor of a punk aesthetic in the 1970s, died Thursday, December 29 at the age of 81.
She was both the empress of punk and the star designer of British fashion, making her job a political platform: “ Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully surrounded by her family in Clapham, south London. The world needs people like Vivienne to turn things around for the better “, has indicated his haute couture brand Thursday, December 29 on Twitter.
In a statement quoted by the PA agency, her husband and creative partner Andreas Kronthaler added: ” We worked until the end and she left me a lot to go on. Thank you darling “. The Austrian, 25 years his junior, took over the artistic direction of his label in 2016, now the Westwood brand: a rebellious, transgressive and committed label.
” Defending ideas makes me happy “, she told her friend Ian Kelly, co-author with her of a biography published in 2014.
Worldwide success with the punk aesthetic embodied by the Sex Pistols
Born Vivienne Swire – Westwood being the name of her first husband, with whom she remained for four years – on April 8, 1941 in a small village in the county of Derbyshire (central England), she was the eldest of a modest family of three children.
She left her native region at the age of 17 for London where she studied fashion. His meeting with Malcolm McLaren, the future manager of the group Sex Pistolschanges his life.
Driven by the same desire to break with the generation Peace and Love in the 1960s, the couple started making clothes and opened a shop on King’s Road in 1970. The couple sold torn t-shirts, chains, padlocks, safety pins, swastikas and other accessories. Porn T-shirts, outfits inspired by sadomasochism, pumps with stiletto heels or vinyl tights make up the outfits that Vivienne Westwood wears in front of dumbfounded passers-by: success is there.
Their proximity to Sex Pistols, whose hit ” God save the Queen » is a worldwide success, anchors the couple in the punk universe. Vivienne Westwood, hair dyed orange or white, dresses Johnny Rotten’s band and McLaren markets the punk aesthetic.
” always punk »
It was during this period that she designed her famous T-shirt featuring the face of Queen Elizabeth. In 1981, she organized her first fashion show in London, which she named ” Pirates “.
Separated from Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood then forged her own style in the 1980s, and her brand enjoyed great success the following decade. She remarried in 1993 with Andreas Kronthaler, who taught fashion in Vienna and became her creative partner. ” What I do today is still punk. It’s always about crying out against injustice and making people think even if it’s uncomfortable. I will always remain punk in this sense “, she confided to Ian Kelly.
Political and ecological commitment
True to her irreverent spirit, she was photographed in 1992 leaving Buckingham Palace without underwear. The designer had just been made an officer of the British Empire by the Queen and had bared her private parts as she twirled her skirt.
But above all, Vivienne Westwood remains an ultra-politicized fashion designer. Convictions that she defended on her podiums, such as her commitment to the environment. As early as 2008, she called on the fashion industry to take climate change into account and urged consumers not to constantly buy clothes, even if her critics pointed out her contradictions in this area.
His other big fight was the defense of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, arrested in 2019 after spending more than seven years as a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. A year later, she appeared in a giant cage in front of a London court to protest her extradition.
At the Official, she confided in 2018: “” I used fashion to challenge the status quo. »
(With AFP & Reuters)