British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, the great lady of provocative and eccentric fashion, inventor of a “punk” aesthetic in the 1970s, died Thursday at the age of 81.
“Vivienne Westwood died peacefully and surrounded by her loved ones today in Clapham, South London,” her fashion house announced.
Born on April 8, 1941 in Glossop, in the Midlands, Vivienne Isabel Swire kept the name of her first husband, Derek Westwood, from whom she divorced in 1966.
In the 1970s, she met Malcolm McLaren, the future manager of the Sex Pistols, then an art student, who became her companion and business partner.
high priestess of punk
Vivienne Westwood, hair dyed orange or white, dresses Johnny Rotten’s band and McLaren markets the punk aesthetic.
The couple sold ripped t-shirts, chains, padlocks, safety pins, swastikas and other accessories from their Kings’ Road shop and staged their first fashion show in 1981.
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.
Frequently engaged in the political field, to protest for example once morest climate change or to support the founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange, she confided to the Official in 2018: “I used fashion to challenge the status quo.”
Stylist Vivienne Westwood posed in a cage to protest once morest the extradition of Wikleaks founder Julien Assange to the Central Criminal Court commonly known as ‘The Old Bailey’ in London, Britain on July 21, 2020. [Neil Hal – EPA]
furr with agencies