Vivian Westwood, the great dame and ultimate British fashion visionary, discusses the influences that have shaped her career.
The iconic Dame Vivienne Westwood found her voice from humble beginnings; her father was a former greengrocer and her mother a homemaker, exposing the clichéd charm of village life in Tintwistle, in the Peak District.
“Despite that, I always had creative passion in me,” says Vivien. “It was a desire to be different, to go about making things and designing stuff. I think I first noticed it when I was 13 or 14. ‘Rock Around the Clock’ by Bill Haley and the Comets was top of the charts, and there were all these Teddy boys mooching around. By then, we were living in Derbyshire. Not only did they look good, but they were overturning buses and ripping the seats out and we wanted some of it.”
By the time Westwood moved in with Malcolm McLaren in his council flat in Clapham, her desire to “be someone, be anyone”, was unrelenting.
The couple had a child, Joseph, and their mutual pursuit of fame led McLaren into managing the Sex Pistols as his effortlessly stylish partner capitalised on the ‘anything goes’ attitude in the punk era by putting together collections that were sharp, edgy, and non-conformist.
“I started making clothes and quickly realised we were where it was at. Malcolm wanted to rework the ‘50s and I had some really nice ideas about how fashion could be embedded in music, because no-one was really doing that, hence the Johnny Rotten influence.”
Westwood’s iconic shop on King’s Road soon doubled as a cultural reference point for punk-era fashion, and even when the Six Pistols imploded in the aftermath of Sid Vicious’s death in 1979, her ability to craft styles that were reflective and forward-thinking, yet completely in touch with trends, saw her stand alone in contemporary London fashion throughout the 1980s.
“I’ve always felt I had a ‘sixth sense’ of what is going to sell,” she says. “You do that little corset, and it gives that something that nobody has seen since the 1800s, and you just know that you’re onto something. Sadie Frost was the first person to wear that on the catwalk and the photographers just died! It’s always been like that for me. I don’t doubt I have been incredibly lucky along the way, but I know I have something in me that really spots this stuff.”
