Who was Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire in Derbyshire in 1941, was a British designer. She died in London on 29 December 2022, aged 81. [4]
From teaching to punk design
She briefly studied jewellery and silversmithing before training as a primary-school teacher. While teaching, she continued making clothes and jewellery to sell in London. [5]
In 1971, she and Malcolm McLaren opened Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road. [12]
The shop became SEX in 1974 and Seditionaries in 1976. Westwood and McLaren combined provocative T-shirts, fetish references, straps and biker clothing. Their collaboration helped shape punk’s visual identity and its relationship with music, particularly through the Sex Pistols. [1]
Collections and creative language
Pirate, for autumn–winter 1981–1982, was her first runway collection with McLaren. Loose shirts, roomy trousers and boots drew on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century silhouettes. These clothes connected with the New Romantic aesthetic, carrying historical imagery into music and club culture. [6]
Witches, in 1983–1984, ended her collaboration with McLaren. In 1985, Mini-Crini compressed the structure of the Victorian crinoline into a miniskirt. She also turned the corset into outerwear, altering historical clothing’s scale, context and construction to create new silhouettes. [7]
Her Harris Tweed work brought wool jackets, waistcoats, trousers and shirts into combinations that altered the suit’s proportions, giving the traditional Scottish cloth a contemporary tailoring interpretation. [5]
For Portrait in 1990, she incorporated images from the Wallace Collection, including François Boucher’s Daphnis and Chloë on corsets and accessories. Painting repeatedly entered her clothing: eighteenth-century motifs moved from museum walls onto the body, retaining their ornament while acquiring a new function. [8]
Footwear also explored extreme proportions. Platforms held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art show Westwood exaggerating historical shapes and connecting them with club culture. Its Portrait collection pair was worn by Jibby Beane, a former shop assistant and model associated with the label. [9]
Her interest in tartan produced a design of her own, Westwood MacAndreas. The Scottish Register of Tartans credits it to Vivienne Westwood and preserves a woven sample in the National Records of Scotland. It is classified as a fashion tartan, a creative use of the textile tradition. [10]
Teaching, the label and Andreas Kronthaler
From 1989 to 1991, she was a guest professor in the fashion department at Vienna’s University of Applied Arts. The institution preserves images of her teaching and preparations for the 1990–1991 diploma show, documenting an educational strand alongside her commercial collections. [11]
Andreas Kronthaler became her long-term creative collaborator. In 2016, Gold Label was renamed Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood, making that shared responsibility more visible. The main Vivienne Westwood line retained a separate identity within the house. [12]
Collaborations and craft production
In December 2018, she presented a Burberry collection created with Riccardo Tisci and Andreas Kronthaler. It reinterpreted archive double-breasted jackets, mini kilts, berets and platforms in Burberry’s Vintage Check. The collaboration included clothing and fundraising activities supporting Cool Earth. [13]
Her label’s relationship with the Ethical Fashion Initiative brought orders to Kenyan artisan groups. The International Trade Centre’s evaluation records a 400-bag order to the Sanata group in 2010 and later orders. EFI organized technical training to meet production requirements, linking commercial work with skills development. [17]
Climate Revolution and environmental campaigns
At the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympics, she presented Climate Revolution, seeking to mobilize organizations and individuals on climate change. Her Active Resistance to Propaganda manifesto and illustrated playing cards used text and graphics to express ideas about culture, economics and collective action. [14]
For Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic campaign, she designed a T-shirt worn by more than sixty public figures photographed by Andy Gotts. The 2015 exhibition used their portraits to call for Arctic protection, making the design a common element connecting participants from music, film and fashion. [15]
Cool Earth records cumulative donations from Westwood exceeding £1.5 million. In 2013, she and Kronthaler visited an Asháninka community project in Peru. Her support included shows, T-shirts and fundraising campaigns, while conservation and community projects were conducted by the organization and its local partners. [16]
Awards, books and archive
She received Britain’s Designer of the Year award in 1990 and 1991, an OBE in 1992 and a damehood in 2006. [4]
The Design Council awarded her the Prince Philip Designers Prize in 2010. The prize considered quality, originality and commercial achievement, alongside contributions to design’s standing and education. It placed her career alongside those of practitioners in fields including product design, architecture and engineering. [18]
In 2014, she published Vivienne Westwood with biographer Ian Kelly. The book combines her personal account with her co-author’s work on the people, ideas and experiences shaping her life, complementing study of the clothes with the autobiographical perspective of a designer involved in her own public narrative. [19]
Continuing legacy
Vivienne Westwood: Catwalk, presented in 2021, surveyed forty years of collections from 1981, including Andreas Kronthaler’s work. The archive traces changing silhouettes, fabrics and historical references beyond a handful of emblematic punk images. [21]
After her death, The Vivienne Foundation launched publicly in January 2023 to continue her advocacy. Its four stated themes cover climate, human rights, opposition to war and criticism of capitalism. The organization extends the campaigning strand of her legacy, separately from the fashion house’s commercial continuity. [20]
