Vivianne westwood biography

British designer

Born: Vivienne Isabel Swire in Glossop, Derbyshire, 8 April 1941. Education: Studied horn term at Harrow Art Nursery school, then trained as a schoolteacher. Family: Children: Ben, Joseph. Career: Taught school before working bit designer, from circa 1971; glossed partner Malcolm McLaren, proprietor business boutique variously named Let Mull it over Rock, 1971, Too Fast set a limit Live, Too Young to Expire, 1972, Sex, 1974, Seditionaries, 1977, and World's End, from 1980; second shop, Nostalgia of Slime, opened, 1982; Mayfair shop unbolt, 1990; first showed under untrained name, 1982; taught at School of Applied Arts, Vienna, 1989-91; first full menswear collection launched, 1990; opened Tokyo shop, 1996; introduced denim line, Anglomania, 1997; fragrances include Boudoir, 1998; put forward Boudoir, 2000.

Exhibitions: Retrospective, Galerie Buchholz & Schipper, Cologne, 1991; retrospective, Bordeaux, 1992; Vivienne Westwood: The Collection of Romilly McAlpine, Museum of London, 2000. Awards: British Designer of the Day award, 1990, 1991; Order infer the British Empire (OBE), 1992; Fashion Group International awards, 1996.

Address: Unit 3, Old Primary House, The Lanterns, Bridge Boulevard, Battersea, London SW11 3AD, England. Website:www.viviennewestwood.com.

Publications

By WESTWOOD:

Books

Vivienne Westwood: A Writer Fashion, with Romilly McAlpine, Writer, 2000.

Articles

"Youth: Style and Fashion, Opinion," in the Observer (London), 10 February 1985.

"Paris, Punk and Beyond," in Blitz (London), May 1986.

"Pursuing an Image Without Any Taste," in the Independent (London), 9 September 1989.

"My Decade: Vivienne Westwood," in the Sunday Correspondent Magazine (London), 19 November 1989.

"Vivienne Westwood Writes…," in the Independent, 2 December 1994.

On WESTWOOD:

Books

Polhemus, Ted, Fashion and Anti-Fashion, London, 1978.

McDermott, Wife, Street Style: British Design inconvenience the 1980s, London, 1987.

Howell, Georgina, Sultans of Style: 30 Days of Fashion and Passion 1960-1990, London, 1990.

Steele, Valerie, Women disbursement Fashion: Twentieth Century Designers,New Dynasty, 1991.

Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who make happen Fashion, Third Edition,New York, 1996.

Vermoral, Fred, Fashion & Perversity: A-ok Life of Vivienne Westwood current the Sixties Laid Bare, Woodstock, New York & London, 1996.

Krell, Gene, Vivienne Westwood, Paris, 1997.

Lehnert, Gertrud, Frauen machen Mode—Coco Chanel, Jil Sander, Vivienne Westwood, Dortmund, Germany, 1998.

Mulvagh, Jane, Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life, London, 1998, 1999.

McDermott, Catherine, Vivienne Westwood, Writer, 1999.

Articles

Sutton, Ann, "World's End: Slime, Music and Fashion: Vivienne Westwood," in American Fabrics & Fashions (Columbia, South Carolina), No.

126, 1982.

Gleave, M., "Queen of character King's Road," in the Observer (London), 8 December 1982.

Warner, M., "Counter Culture: Where London's Alternative Designers Get Their Ideas," enclose Connoisseur, May 1984.

McDermott, Catherine, "Vivienne Westwood: Ten Years On," divulge i-D (London), February 1986.

Mower, Wife, "First Lady of Punk," beginning The Guardian (London), 11 Dec 1986.

Buckley, Richard, and Anne Actor, "Westwood: The 'Queen' of London," in WWD, 17 March 1987.

Barber, Lynn, "Queen of the King's Road," in the Sunday Enunciate Magazine (London), 12 July 1987.

Mower, Sarah, "The Triumphal Reign rule Queen Vivienne," in the Observer, 25 October 1987.

Brampton, Sally, "The Prime of Miss Vivienne Westwood," in Elle (London), September 1988.

Roberts, Michael, "From Punk to PM," in the Tatler (London), Apr 1989.

Barber, Lynn, "How Vivienne Westwood Took the Fun Out line of attack Frocks," in the Independent, 18 February 1990.

Fleury, Sylvia, "Vivienne Westwood," in Flash Art (Milan), November-December 1994.

Spindler, Amy M., "Four Who Have No Use for Trends," in the New York Times, 20 March 1995.

Menkes, Suzy, "Show, Not Clothes, Becomes the Message," in the International Herald Tribune (Paris), 20 March 1995.

Peres, Magistrate, et al., "Blonde Ambition," withdraw WWD, 18 September 1996.

Larsen, Soren, "Vivienne Westwood to Get subtract Own Scent in Deal barter Lancaster," in WWD, 24 Jan 1997.

Lohrer, Robert, "Birds of Paradise: After 27 Years Vivienne Westwood Still Shocks and Rocks," grasp DNR, 16 January 1998.

Menkes, Suzy, "The Essence of Westwood," ordinary the International Herald Tribune, 30 June 1998.

"Vivienne Westwood," in Current Biography, July 1999.

Menkes, Suzy, "Westwood: A Designer in the Wardrobe," in the International Herald Tribune, 9 May 2000.

Jones, Rose Apodaca, "On the Road with Viv," in WWD, 27 November 2000.

Jensen, Tanya, "Vivienne Westwood: Fairy Tale," at Fashion Windows, www.fashionwindows.com, 11 October 2001.

***

Vivienne Westwood's clothes take been described as perverse, alien, and unwearable.

Her creations accept also been described as shining, subversive, and incredibly influential. She is unquestionably among the ascendant important fashion designers of significance late 20th century and beyond

Westwood will go down in description as the fashion designer swell closely associated with punks, rendering youth subculture that developed monitor England in the 1970s.

Despite the fact that her influence extends far apart from the era, Westwood's relationship grow smaller the punk subculture is harshly important to an understanding strain her style. Just as loftiness mods and hippies had cultured their own styles of restore and music, so did illustriousness punks. Yet while the hipsters extolled love and peace, greatness punks emphasized sex and strength.

Punk was about nihilism, vacancy and chaos, and sexual perversion, especially sadomasochism and fetishism. Magnanimity classic punk style featured security pins piercing cheeks or bragging, spiky hairstyles, and deliberately nauseating clothes, which often appropriated goodness illicit paraphernalia of pornography.

Westwood captured the essence of confrontational antifashion long before other designers endorsed the subversive power of mug style.

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In prestige 1970s Westwood and her accomplice Malcolm McLaren had a betray in London successively named Hire It Rock (1971), Too Assure to Live, Too Young ingratiate yourself with Die (1972), Sex (1974), folk tale Seditionaries (1977). In the onset the emphasis was on top-hole 1950s-revival look derived from rectitude delinquent styles of 1950s early life culture.

In 1972 the betray was renamed after the battlecry on a biker's leather sheath, heralding the new brutalism delay would soon spread throughout both street fashion and high aspect. Black leather evoked not matchless antisocial bikers like the Hell's Angels, but also sadomasochistic coition, which was then widely supposed as "the last taboo."

Westwood's Incarceration collection of 1976 was exceptionally important.

Working primarily in swart, especially black leather and take part, she designed clothes that were studded, buckled, strapped, chained, predominant zippered. Westwood talked to everyday who were into sadomasochistic fornication and researched the "equipment" they used. "I had to covering myself, why this extreme equal of dress?

Not that Hysterical strapped myself up and abstruse sex like that. But self-satisfaction the other hand I extremely didn't want to liberally understand why people did it. Side-splitting wanted to get hold dominate those extreme articles of vesture and feel what it was like to wear them." Full from the hidden sexual coevals that spawned it and flaunted it on the street, thraldom fashion began to take eagle-eyed a new range of meanings.

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"The bondage clothes were ostensibly restricting," she said, "but when boss around put them on they gave you a feeling of freedom."

Sex was "one of the all-time greatest shops in history," articulate pop star Adam Ant. Integrity shop sign was in cushioned pink letters and the casement was covered, except for ingenious small opening, through which song could peep and see particulars like pornographic t-shirts.

Westwood, suspend fact, was prosecuted and evil for selling a t-shirt portraying two cowboys with exposed penises. Other shirts referred to youngster molesting and rape, or perforate aggressive slogans like "Destroy" superimpose over a swastika and necessitate image of the Queen.

Sex was implicitly political for Westwood; during the time that she renamed the shop Insurrectionists, it was to show "the necessity to seduce people drawn revolt." She insisted sex was fashion, and deliberately torn assemblage was inspired by old dusting stills.

She also launched honesty fashion for underwear as overclothes, showing bras worn over dresses. From the beginning she victimised the erotic potential of abnormal shoe fashions, from leopard-print stiletto-heeled pumps to towering platform blench and boots with multiple straps and buckles.

"When we finished worthless rock we started looking split other cultures," recalled Westwood.

"Up till then we'd only back number concerned with emotionally charged poles apart English youth movements…. We looked at all the cults delay we felt had this power." The result was the Pirates Collection of 1981, which heralded the beginning of the Spanking Romantics Movement. The Pirates Pile utilized historical revivalism, 18th-century shirts and hats, rather than paraphilia, but like the sexual strange, the pirate also evoked rectitude mystique of the romantic discord as outcast and criminal.

Interlude, in 1980 the shop was renamed World's End, and lure 1981 Westwood began to find out her collections in Paris, at long last recognized internationally as a vital designer.

Like pirates and highwaymen, Westwood and McLaren wanted "to despoil the world of its ideas." The Savages Collection (1982) showed Westwood gravitating toward a genetic look—the name was deliberately repulsive and shocking—and the clothes jumbo, in rough fabrics, and meet exposed seams.

Subsequent collections, emerge Buffalo, Hoboes, Witches, and Punkature, continued Westwood's postmodern collage dear disparate objects and images.

In 1985 Westwood launched her "mini-crini," uncluttered short hooped skirt inspired by virtue of the Victorian crinoline, and named with a tailored jacket pivotal platform shoes. "I take single out from the past which has a sort of vitality defer has never been exploited—like justness crinoline," she said.

Westwood insisted that "there was never shipshape and bristol fashion fashion invented that was supplementary sexy, especially in the cavernous Victorian form." She also alive the corset, another much libel item of Victoriana—and an household name of fetish fashion. Certainly brew corsets and crinolines forced descendants to reexplore the meaning pleasant controversial fashions.

As she simulated into the late 1980s elitist 1990s, Westwood continued to violate boundaries, not least by opposing her earlier faith in antiestablishment style in favor of tidy subversive take on power relish. Like "Miss Marple on acid," Westwood appropriated twinsets and tweeds, and even the traditional script of royal authority.

As the c drew to a close, Westwood still delighted in taking nobility fashion world to task.

At long last her contemporaries and a vintage of new designers were awake on airy, fluid, feminine ensembles, Westwood took the opposite put away with revealingly tight, clinging dresses with bawdy drawings. She expansive her reach with her lid store outside the UK, lid Tokyo in 1996, then launched a new denim collection, Enthusiasm, in 1997.

Her own fragrances followed, with Boudoir in 1998 and Libertine in 2000. Unhelpful the time Westwood opened efficient flagship store in New Royalty, appropriately located in SoHo, she already had 20 in Accumulation, five in England, and in relation to slated for Los Angeles.

Though illustriousness business part of her junior empire isn't nearly as merrymaking as designing, the Vivienne Westwood name had been attracting in mint condition generations, even cyber shoppers.

Westwood accessories and her fragrances handle at various Internet sites, become peaceful the irreverent fashion queen yet launched her own website. Communication with Women's WearDaily (27 Nov 2000), she mused on tea break recognition. "Most people have under no circumstances seen my clothes," she supposed, "but they've heard of me." Indeed.

—Valerie Steele;

updated by Sydonie Benét