Vivienne Westwood dies: Fashion designer was 81

LONDON, UK — Vivienne Westwood, an influential trend maverick who performed a key position within the punk motion, died (*81*) at 81.

Westwood’s eponymous trend home introduced her dying on social media platforms, saying she died peacefully. A reason behind dying was not disclosed.

“Vivienne continued to do the things she loved, up until the last moment, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better,” the assertion mentioned. “She led an amazing life. Her innovation and impact over the last 60 years has been immense and will continue into the future.”

Westwood’s trend profession started within the Seventies with the punk explosion, when her radical strategy to city avenue type took the world by storm. But she went on to take pleasure in a protracted profession highlighted by a string of triumphant runway exhibits in London, Paris, Milan and New York.

The identify Westwood turned synonymous with type and angle whilst she shifted focus from yr to yr. Her vary was huge and her work was by no means predictable.

As her stature grew, she appeared to transcend trend, along with her designs proven in museum collections all through the world. The younger lady who had scorned the British institution ultimately turned considered one of its main lights, and she or he used her elite place to foyer for environmental reforms whilst she stored her hair dyed the brilliant shade of orange that turned her trademark.

Andrew Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute on the Metropolitan Museum of New York, mentioned Westwood could be celebrated for pioneering the punk look, pairing a radical trend strategy with the anarchic punk sounds developed by the Sex Pistols, managed by her then-partner, Malcolm McLaren.

“They gave the punk movement a look, a style, and it was so radical it broke from anything in the past,” he mentioned. “The ripped shirts, the safety pins, the provocative slogans. She introduced postmodernism. It was so influential from the mid-70s. The punk movement has never dissipated — it’s become part of our fashion vocabulary. It’s mainstream now.”

Westwood’s lengthy profession was filled with contradictions: She was a lifelong insurgent who was honored a number of occasions by Queen Elizabeth II. She dressed like a young person even in her 60s and have become an outspoken advocate of combating world warming, warning of planetary doom if local weather change was not managed.

In her punk days, Westwood’s garments have been typically deliberately stunning: T-shirts adorned with drawings of bare boys, and “bondage pants” with sadomasochistic overtones have been customary fare in her common London outlets. But Westwood was in a position to make the transition from punk to high fashion with out lacking a beat, holding her profession going with out stooping to self-caricature.

“She was always trying to reinvent fashion. Her work is provocative, it’s transgressive. It’s very much rooted in the English tradition of pastiche and irony and satire. She is very proud of her Englishness, and still she sends it up,” Bolton mentioned.

One of these transgressive and contentious designs featured a swastika, an inverted picture of Jesus Christ on the cross and the phrase “Destroy.” In an autobiography written with Ian Kelly, she mentioned it was meant as part of a statement against politicians torturing individuals, citing Chile’s Augusto Pinochet. When requested if she regretted the swastika design in a 2009 interview with Time magazine, Westwood mentioned no.

“I don’t, because we were just saying to the older generation, ‘We don’t accept your values or your taboos, and you’re all fascists,’” she responded.

She approached her work with gusto in her early years, however over time appeared to tire of the clamor and buzz. After many years of designing, she typically spoke wistfully of transferring past trend so she may think about environmental issues and academic tasks.

“Fashion can be so boring,” she advised The Associated Press after unveiling considered one of her new collections at a 2010 present. “I’m trying to find something else to do.” At the time, she was speaking up plans to start out a tv sequence about artwork and science.

Her runway exhibits have been at all times essentially the most stylish occasions, drawing stars from the glittery world of movie, music, and tv who wished to take pleasure in Westwood’s mirrored glory. But nonetheless she spoke out in opposition to consumerism and conspicuous consumption, even urging individuals to not purchase her costly, fantastically made garments.

“I just tell people, stop buying clothes,” she mentioned. “Why not protect this gift of life while we have it? I don’t take the attitude that destruction is inevitable. Some of us would like to stop that and help people survive.”

Westwood was a self-taught designer with no formal trend coaching. She advised Marie Claire journal that she discovered the best way to make her personal garments as a young person by following patterns. When she wished to promote Fifties-style garments at her first store, she discovered previous garments in markets and took them aside to grasp the lower and development.

“It was not a very efficient way of making clothes, but it was a great way for me to build up my technique,” she advised the journal.

Westwood was born within the Derbyshire village of Glossop on April 8, 1941. Her household moved to London in 1957 and she or he attended artwork faculty for one time period.

She met McLaren within the Sixties whereas working as a main faculty instructor after separating from her first husband, Derek Westwood. She and McLaren opened a small store on the King’s Road in Chelsea in 1971, the tail finish of the “Swinging London” period ushered in by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

The store modified its identify and focus a number of occasions, working as “SEX” — Westwood and McLaren have been fined in 1975 for an “indecent exhibition” there — and “World’s End” and “Seditionaries.”

“Vivienne is gone and the world is already a less interesting place. Love you Viv,” tweeted Chrissie Hynde, the frontwoman of the Pretenders and a former employee on the couple’s retailer.

Westwood moved right into a contemporary kind of designing along with her “Pirates” assortment, exhibited in her first catwalk present in 1981. That breakthrough is credited with taking Westwood in a extra conventional path, exhibiting her curiosity in incorporating historic British designs into up to date garments.

It was additionally an essential step in an ongoing rapprochement between Westwood and the style world. The insurgent ultimately turned considered one of its most celebrated stars, identified for reinterpreting opulent attire from the previous and sometimes discovering inspiration in 18th century work.

But she nonetheless discovered methods to shock: Her Statue of Liberty corset in 1987 is remembered as the beginning of “underwear as outerwear” development.

She ultimately branched out into a variety of enterprise actions, together with an alliance with Italian designer Giorgio Armani, and developed her ready-to-wear Red Label line, her extra unique Gold Label line, a menswear assortment and fragrances referred to as Boudoir and Libertine. Westwood outlets opened in New York, Hong Kong, Milan and several other different main cities.

She was named designer of the yr by the British Fashion Council in 1990 and 1991.

Her uneasy relationship with the British institution is maybe greatest exemplified by her 1992 journey to Buckingham Palace to obtain an Order of the British Empire medal from Queen Elizabeth II: She wore no underwear, and posed for photographers in a means that made that abundantly clear.

Apparently the queen was not offended: Westwood was invited again to obtain the much more auspicious designation of Dame Commander of the British Empire — the feminine equal of a knighthood — in 2006.

Westwood is survived by her second husband, Austrian-born Andreas Kronthaler, and her two sons.

The first, trend photographer Ben Westwood, was her son with Derek Westwood. The second, Joe Corre — her son with McLaren — co-founded the upscale Agent Provocateur lingerie line.