Vivienne Westwood

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.

Westwood was synonymous with 1970s punk rock and dressed the Sex Pistols. Read more at straitstimes.com.

She held a large “climate revolution” banner at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony in London, and frequently turned her models into catwalk eco-warriors. Her sky-high platform shoes garnered worldwide attention in 1993 when model Naomi Campbell stumbled on the catwalk in a pair. From the late 1960s, she lived in a small flat in south London for some 30 years and cycled to work. Their son Ben was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966. But, ever keen to shock, Westwood turned up at Buckingham Palace without underwear - a fact she proved to photographers by a revealing twirl of her skirt. “Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London.

Doyenne of British design Vivienne Westwood, who melded music and fashion together to create punk and brought rebellious politics to the catwalk, ...

So I lost interest." "But when I turned around on the barricades there was no one there... Who needs leaders who are a total rip-off, who create war and torture?" Thank you darling." "Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. Advertisement

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.

When Westwood met Malcolm McLaren, the manager of seminal punk band Sex Pistols (with whom she went on to have a child), they opened a boutique in London's ...

In 1993, Westwood married Austrian design student Andreas Kronthaler and the couple formed a successful partnership in both life and work. By this point, everything she released had underlying social and political messaging, from garments bearing slogans (evoking her punk days), to runway protests about Brexit, global warming and free speech. She had a little plaited bun, a Harris Tweed jacket and a bag with a pair of ballet shoes in it. When her work with McLaren came to an end, however, Westwood continued to dominate the fashion world. The 430 Kings Road store changed its name to coincide with her collection releases, from Let It Rock and Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, to most famously, Sex in 1974. The British designer redefined the way we [dress](https://vogue.sg/red-carpet-style-stars/) more than once, earning her immense respect and global recognition, as well as a Damehood.

British fashion icon Vivienne Westwood died on 29 December, her eponymous fashion label announced. She was 81.

A sad day, Vivienne Westwood was and will remain a towering figure in British fashion. “A sad day, Vivienne Westwood was and will remain a towering figure in British fashion. Westwood held her first major fashion show, Pirate Collection, in 1981. “Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. “We are saddened to learn about the passing of legendary designer Vivienne Westwood. Thank you darling,” Kronthaler, who was also her creative partner, said in a statement.

As the person who dressed the Sex Pistols, Vivienne Westwood, who died Thursday at 81, was synonymous with 1970s punk rock, a rebelliousness that remained ...

She held a large "climate revolution" banner at the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony in London, and frequently turned her models into catwalk eco-warriors. Her sky-high platform shoes garnered worldwide attention in 1993 when model Naomi Campbell stumbled on the catwalk in a pair. From the late 1960s, she lived in a small flat in south London for some 30 years and cycled to work. Their son, Ben, was born in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1966. "And the other thing you should know about punk too: it was a total blast." "Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London.

Tributes have poured in following the death of Dame Vivienne Westwood, the pioneering British fashion designer, at the age of 81. Westwood died “peacefully ...

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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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The London shop she ran with Malcolm McLaren defined an era. “I don't think punk would have happened,” Chrissie Hynde said, “without Vivienne and Malcolm.”

Their aggressively delivered songs, with names like “Anarchy in the U.K.” and “God Save the Queen,” were a soundtrack to the nihilism of Britain in the 1970s. And I blamed the older generation for what was going on too,” she added, “so we wouldn’t even accept their taboos. “It was the hippies who taught my generation about politics, and that’s what I cared about — the world being so corrupt and mismanaged, people suffering, wars, all these terrible things.”… And the look was important.” They saw the store as a laboratory and a salon. In a memoir published in 2014 and simply called “Vivienne Westwood,” Ms. McLaren, an art school dropout who was inspired by the theater of the absurd as championed by the French Situationists, could be controversial; they once included swastikas in their designs. She was quoted in Ms. In shaping the look of the era, Ms. “It’s not about fashion, you see,” she wrote. She’s very focused on the English tradition of tailoring.” The business, which had a pink vinyl sign out front, was an unconventional one, selling fetish wear and fashions inspired by the Teddy Boy look of the 1950s.

From Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington, to Marc Jacobs and Donatella Versace, the most moving tributes from the fashion world to Vivienne Westwood.

I will forever be grateful to have been in your orbit, because to me and most in fashion—and in humanity—you, Vivienne, were the sun. She was kind, normal, and messianic, all uniquely rolled into one visionary force who had not one jot of grandeur about her incredible standing as one of the most influential designers in the world. From the first day I met you to the last day I saw you, you made me smile, listen, learn and love more than the day before. She was one of the very greatest British women, always ahead of her time. Thereon, she heroically devoted herself to standing up for civilized critical and radical thinking, constantly using her position in fashion to speak out about the urgency of environmental destruction. Thank you, Vivienne, for staying so true to your principles and values and most importantly, for leading the way with spunk and with humor.” This talented and brilliant lady was so unique and so punk in all the ways punk should be. Vivienne invented historic fashion design moments that woke us all up and shook the industry to its core. Vivienne once faxed me a handwritten letter inviting me to participate in one of her shows, as one did in the early ’90s. To be able to visit with you recently I feel blessed and will carry that memory in my heart always. You never failed to surprise and to shock. And your beautiful love story with Andreas, one we’d read about in fairy tales, that I was able to witness for decades.

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.

'She turned swinging London into punk London'. Dame Zandra Rhodes, a fashion and textiles giant in the UK, says she was surprised by the news of Westwood's ...

"When I first saw Vivienne's clothes in real life it was in her shop in Liverpool, and I had never ever seen such fabrics and shapes until that day," says the 32-year-old based in York. " Fashion designer Matty Bovan first discovered Westwood as a teenager when he spotted her work in an issue of fashion magazine Vogue. Describing Westwood's allure, Matty explains: "She rewrote the whole book of what modern fashion is, from everything to the cutting, to the use of sportswear, to all the historical references, to all the English textiles and craft. "It's a nod to her - the tartan, the punky skulls - it's everything she was about." "From the moment I decided to set the business up, I knew I wanted it to be inspired by Vivienne," she said, "just at a cheaper price point".

British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, who brought punk style to global attention, died on December 29 in South London at the age of eighty-one.

“The only reason I am in fashion is to destroy the word ‘conformity’,” Westwood said in her biography. Besides selling leather jackets, the store offered Westwood’s own designs: shredded and pinned surplus T-shirts unsold by the bands McLaren managed as well as tees that Westwood had stenciled with suggestive phrases, or dyed in the couple’s bathtub, or to which she had stitched zippers, or chicken bones boiled bare on the couple’s stove. Attendant to her pathbreaking designs were her strong political beliefs, about which she was vocal. Following the couple’s split shortly thereafter, and with their shop, finally named Worlds End, shuttered, Westwood entered the world of high fashion in earnest. Following a brief marriage to factory apprentice Derek Westwood, whose last name she would retain, she took up with McLaren, himself an art-school dropout and a music promoter, and the pair began selling secondhand rock records together in the back of a clothing shop on King’s Road. Westwood with impresario Malcolm McLaren in 1971 opened the boutique that would eventually be called SEX on London’s King’s Road, where she sold her clothing, shocking at the time for incorporating safety pins and purposeful rips.

Paul McCartney, Cyndi Lauper, Naomi Campbel, and Halsey are just a few stars who shared sweet and poignant tributes to late icon Vivienne Westwood.

“I will forever be grateful to have been in your orbit , because to me and most , in fashion & in humanity, you, Vivienne, were the sun.” The world needs people like Vivienne to make a change for the better.” I am grateful for the moments I got to share with you and Andreas.” “Vivienne continued to do the things she loved, up until the last moment, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better. You were a force of nature, that would always encourage me to push forward and not give up on things I was passionate about outside of modeling,” Campbell wrote. “You never failed to surprise and to shock. [Cyndi Lauper wrote](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cmx82uVs-sp/) on Instagram, “So sorry to hear that we lost [@viviennewestwood](https://www.instagram.com/viviennewestwood/) today. She added, “I will cherish all of our conversations and teas (and *tea*! I will always remember the night we bonded over our mutual love for Yves Saint Laurent,” Marc Jacobs Heaven just became a bit more snatched and fabulous.” “Your legacy is immortal and eternal. [McCartney wrote on Twitter ](https://twitter.com/PaulMcCartney/status/1608812774104129537?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1608812774104129537%7Ctwgr%5Ee8bd0a34c4c88946ab4b0804a8d3ab09f11074ad%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpeople.com%2Fembed%3Furl%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2Ftwitter2Fstatus2F1608812774104129537id%3Dmntl-sc-block_1-0-133-iframeoptions%3De303DdocId%3D7090343)sharing a photo with the late legend.

Vivienne Westwood, the English fashion designer who helped to popularize punk style, has died. She was 81.

Members of bands including Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Slits were influenced by her fashion, and Viv Albertine of the Slits wrote in her memoir, “Vivienne and Malcolm use clothes to shock, irritate and provoke a reaction but also to inspire change. Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw character wore one of Westwood’s wedding dress creations in the film version of “Sex and the City.” “Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London,” a post on her official Twitter page reads.