Vivienne Westwood

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.

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 made provocation itself into an art form — from the leather bondage gear she popularized in the 1970s to the time she went without underwear to ...

Who needs leaders who are a total rip-off, who create war and torture?" "We saw it as a question of youth against age. "Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. Thank you darling." And she held on to her edge even as she was embraced by the establishment, thanks largely to her energetic activism for environmental causes. In a statement quoted by the PA news agency, her husband and creative partner Andreas Kronthaler said: "We have been working until the end and she has given me plenty of things to get on with.

Vivienne Westwood, British fashion icon and pioneer of the punk style movement, passed away on Dec. 29 at the age of 81. News about her demise was confirmed ...

She was named Fashion Designer of the Year for two years in a row in 1990 and 1991 by the British Fashion Council. Tao gives you a feeling that you belong to the cosmos and gives purpose to your life; it gives you such a sense of identity and strength to know you’re living the life you can live and therefore ought to be living: make full use of your character and full use of your life on earth.’” As an activist, I have created many graphics promoting political and environmental issues, which I reimagined in the design of a pack of playing cards. And in 1985, the designer introduced her “Mini-Crini” collection, an ode to the Queen’s childhood years. Looking at “plundering history and the Third World,” the collection featured “romantic looks in gold, orange, and yellow” playing with baggy trousers and asymmetrical pieces. Her innovation and impact over the last 60 years has been immense and will continue into the future.”

From Zendaya to Blake Lively, celebrities embraced Vivienne Westwood's designs at Hollywood events. Here are her best red carpet gowns.

The Queen of Punk had a resurgence of sorts in the last few years as Gen Z celebs embraced her designs. Born in Armenia and raised in Glendale, she studied communication, art history and sociocultural linguistics at UC Santa Barbara and journalism at Columbia University. Before joining The Times in 2022, she spent almost 10 years at Variety as a news editor.

Britain's provocative dame of fashion, who dressed the Sex Pistols, was an unapologetically political designer synonymous with 1970s punk rock.

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.

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

Who needs leaders who are a total rip-off, who create war and torture?" "Vivienne Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London. "We saw it as a question of youth against age.

Iconoclastic British designer rose to prominence by outfitting the Sex Pistols as punk took off in the 1970s.

In 2020, she suspended herself in a birdcage to protest against the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition from the UK. Love you Viv,” tweeted Chrissie Hynde, the frontwoman of the Pretenders and a former worker at the couple’s store. As a vegetarian, Westwood lobbied the British government to [ban the retail sale of fur](https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/mar/16/top-fashion-designers-letter-to-pm-calls-for-ban-on-uk-fur-sales) alongside other top designers including Stella McCartney. Last month she made a statement of support for the climate protesters who threw soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, writing: “Young people are desperate. In 2022 she designed the suit and dress worn by Assange and his wife, Stella Moris, at their wedding. But she still found ways to shock: her Statue of Liberty corset in 1987 is credited as starting the “underwear as outerwear” trend. The pair opened a small shop on Kings Road in Chelsea in 1971 that became a haunt of many of the bands she outfitted, including the Sex Pistols, who were managed by McLaren. In 2007, she published a manifesto titled Born in the Derbyshire village of Tintwistle in 1941, Westwood’s family moved to London in 1957, where she attended art school for one term. She later told Dazed Digital that “the suit I wore had been ordered by Margaret Thatcher from Aquascutum, but she had then cancelled it”. Since her earliest punk days, Westwood remixed and inverted imagery drawn from the British monarchy. We have been working until the end and she has given me plenty of things to get on with.

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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No fashion designer ever had a Paris show like the one staged by Vivienne Westwood in 1991. Although she was by then 50 and had been making clothes for sale ...

Westwood accepted an offer of management from the fashion PR Carlo D’Amario, and they travelled to Italy to seek backing for a label of her own. With introductions from rag trade friends, she moved incrementally into bank loans and business funding to pay off the debts of Worlds End, and to buy rather than rent her second shop, in Davies Street, Mayfair. Westwood’s politics, unstoppably advocated, were anti-establishment, whatever the current establishment might be, and settled in the direction of Green party-pro-environmentalism, although there were problems over her company’s tax-related fine for undervaluing its assets, and its corporate tax wriggles. The Harris tweed, tartan and barathea of her collection of 1987, again sewn in the flat, recalled Glossop’s stout wool stuffs, respecting tradition yet radically cut. Westwood was discovering that her work was known, and admired, more outside Britain than in it. She returned to her parents, and began to make jewellery for a stall in Portobello Road. These she printed with slogans and lewd images, gay and straight; she distressed and adorned them, dyed them in her bath and stitched on chicken bones boiled clean in the kitchen. Its next incarnation was as SEX, in 1974, with Westwood sourcing its stock of rubber fetish-wear through the pages of Exchange & Mart. Her father was a factory worker; her mother had been in the mills and appreciated a length of good wool worsted – although everything was in short supply during Viv’s childhood. She became a primary school teacher and in 1962 married Derek Westwood, a toolmaker with ambitions, which he achieved, to be an airline pilot. She was born in Tintwistle, just outside the mill town of Glossop, Derbyshire, the daughter of Dora (nee Ball) and Gordon Swire. No fashion designer ever had a Paris show like the one staged by Vivienne Westwood in 1991.

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.

Halsey, Courtney Love & More Remember Vivienne Westwood: 'Your Legacy Is Immortal & Eternal'. Plus, tributes from Cyndi Lauper, Annie Lennox, Paul McCartney and ...

Xxx.”& [Cyndi Lauper](https://www.billboard.com/artist/cyndi-lauper/) reminisced about Westwood’s vibrant fashion shows from the 1990s and legacy as a pioneer in “punk couture,” while [Annie Lennox](https://www.billboard.com/artist/annie-lennox/) memorialized the designer’s longstanding commitment to activism. 29) at the age of 81, and the music community flocked to social media to pay tribute to the [fashion](https://www.billboard.com/t/fashion/) icon. [Halsey](https://www.billboard.com/artist/halsey/) captioned a photo of herself and Westwood seated together in the front row of a fashion show. “Vivienne Westwood is the woman that showed me I could do anything, I could wear what I wanted, she was an ICON and I lived my life through hers in some sorts of way,” the reality contestant tweeted. Love always, and long live Queen Viv.” [Courtney Love](https://www.billboard.com/artist/courtney-love/), meanwhile, paid tribute to the designer on her Instagram Stories, [writing](https://www.instagram.com/stories/courtneylove/3004255216190950369/), “I am so very sorry she has left & so very glad that she lived. winner The Vivienne, whose drag name was inspired by the designer, also paid tribute on Twitter.

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.

Costume designer Jenny Beavan could never afford Vivienne Westwood's designs. But her punk aesthetic, and the world she inhabited, still left a mark.

Because I was quite a nervous and I think I was probably dressed in a rather sober and conventional way in those days. And somehow the whole time, I was never that interested in fashion. ... I’m not sure I ever owned one [laughs], because in those days I was working in theater and it was terribly badly paid. But I do remember the shops very well. And I got really bonded to Dior, doing “Mrs. ... I had no idea she was ill. In terms of “Cruella,” what I had to do really was to find “Cruella’s” look. I wanted to be a theater designer and do sets and, you know, create worlds. But in truth, I had enormous fondness for her and once had the enormous delight of sitting next to her and [widower] Andreas Kronthaler at [a] birthday party celebration. I think it’s because it was so radical. But I think for me, with “Cruella,” it was more the punk aspect of it. And I didn’t think that was right anyhow, because the whole thing of storytelling.