It is really very strange that this has happened. That the fashion world’s eternal trouble girl should do something so conventional, something so boring, as become an old lady at 81, and die peacefully of old age. But that’s what happened when fashion designer Vivienne Westwood passed away on December 29. She came from the British working class, shot up and became a trendsetter and a symbol of the zeitgeist of the early seventies. MUSE: Actress Helena Bonham-Carter has collaborated with Vivienne Westwood for many years, here in a Westwood dress at the Oscars in 2015. Photo: LUCY NICHOLSON / Reuters It was then that Britain looked as if it had solidified, as if the whole the country was mired in a quagmire of economic and political crises, class conflicts, rage, discouragement and dark future prospects. And that was when Westwood and her boyfriend Malcolm McLaren ran the shop SEX in King’s Road in London. He had soon picked up one of the shop’s regular customers, John Lydon, who would become known by the stage name Johnny Rotten, and started the band Sex Pistols. She created the clothes that would become punk’s well-known uniform: T-shirts decorated with pornographic motifs, holey pants held together by safety pins and decorated with razor blades. Sadomasochistic gear was retrieved from dark basements and worn by edgy youth. THE SYMBOL OF THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES: Lovers Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren brought punk into the world in the seventies, she with her clothes, he as the mastermind behind the Sex Pistols. Here they are photographed in 1981. Photo: Richard Young/REX / Shutterstock editorial The signs of shame and poverty were held up as something to be worn with pride. What you could make yourself, with little things you had lying around, was the best, the most admirable. It was all a middle finger to a useless establishment, to those who had driven the country into the ditch while allowing themselves to make judgments about what was appropriate and what was not. It was, for its time, brutal and provocative. Even more provocatively, Westwood eventually mixed the expressions of fetishism and the underground with the very symbols of the British Empire, of tradition and respectability: Military uniforms, plaid boarding school skirts, and the draped, old-fashioned dresses that designer Norman Hartnell had created for Queen Elizabeth . ICONIC: Jamie Reid’s image, which became the cover of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”, is one of the most famous covers in music history. Photo: PETER MUHLY / AFP The royal family in particular was a favorite target for Westwood, McLaren and the circle around them. A month before Queen Elizabeth’s silver jubilee in 1977, the Sex Pistols released the single “God Save the Queen”, a twist on the British national anthem. The single was surrounded by one of the most famous album covers in music history. It depicted a classic portrait of the Queen, with the “Sex Pistols” and the song title positioned as a gag and blindfold. Had Westwood been merely a rebel, someone who with teenage fervor renounced all that was sacred, she would not have remained a towering figure in cultural history. But her relationship with the traditionally British was more complex than that. Because what is happening is not really that she is fighting the uniforms and ball gowns by distancing herself from them, or trying to get them away and replace them with something else. She herself is a sort of imperialist. CHECKS: Actress Christina Ricci in a Vivienne Westwood dress that showcases the designer’s penchant for corsets and checks. Photo: Erik Pendzich/REX / Shutterstock editorial She takes over the aesthetics of the British Empire, mixes it with her own and creates something new – and thus makes sure that it can never be the same again. She herself said, without irony, that Norman Hartnell was one of her sources of inspiration. What makes his drapes beautiful is the same thing that makes her drapes beautiful. Those who wrapped themselves in Westwood’s clothes could get everything that they might deep down like about the old and a little dusty, but made new, mischievous, cheeky, with an irregular skirt hem, a painted slogan. TIE TO HISTORY: Vivienne Westwood took clothes from the past, like the draped ball gowns, and made them more dangerous. Photo: GERHARD GRADWOHL / AP Westwood was perhaps not so much a party to the culture war in Britain in the seventies as a true individualist, one who indulged in whatever she wanted. It seems no coincidence that later in life she would become a kind of uncompromising aristocrat, someone who could speak loudly about how she despised popular taste. She created collections inspired by the most decadent eras of French nobility, while supporting controversial Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, being a vegetarian and animal rights activist, and using her fashion shows to make statements of support for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. FILM STAR FAVORITE: Actress Elle Fanning in Vivienne Westwood on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. Photo: James Gourley/REX / Shutterstock editorial The woman who was once a symbol of the fight against the market-loving Thatcherism herself ended up as one of the world’s biggest and most lucrative brands. It’s not really a paradox, when you think about it. It was no surprise that she accepted when she was awarded the Order of the British Empire and the title of “Dame” by Queen Elizabeth in 1992. Nor was anyone really startled when she turned up in a beautifully tailored suit with a long skirt – and later did a pirouette in the square in front of Buckingham Palace, so the photographers who had turned up could see that she was not wearing underwear. TO THE HONOR OF THE PHOTOGRAPHERS: Vivienne Westwood posed in a proper suit when she received the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth, but showed the photographers afterwards that she was not wearing underwear underneath. Photo: MARTIN KEENE / Pa Photos Vivienne Westwood grabbed everything life had to offer and didn’t let go until she had made it her own.
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Rebel without underwear – Speech
