Fashion Definitions — fashion history, brands and industry terms from Apparel Search
Dame Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire on April 8, 1941 in Tintwistle, Cheshire, is an English fashion designer largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream. Trained as a teacher, she taught at a primary school in North London until 1971, when Malcolm McLaren opened the King's Road boutique that became famous as SEX, and Westwood began selling her outrageous designs there. The punk style the shop dressed the Sex Pistols in included bondage gear, safety pins, razor blades, chains and spiked dog collars worn as jewelry, mixed with traditional British elements such as tartan. Her first runway show, the Pirate collection, was held in London in March 1981.
Dame Vivienne Westwood DBE (b. April 8, 1941) was christened Vivienne Isabel Swire in Tintwhistle, Cheshire, is an English fashion designer largely responsible for modern punk and new wave fashions. She is linked with the Sex Pistols via Malcolm McLaren and their 'SEX/seditionaries' boutique on King's Road, in London during the 1970s.
When she was seventeen, her parents bought a post office and moved to the south of England, down to Harrow, Middlesex. There, Vivienne went to a teacher training college and then taught at a primary school in North London.
Vivienne's first husband was Derek Westwood with whom she had a child named Ben. Their marriage lasted three years before she met Malcolm McLaren, later known for being the manager for punk band The Sex Pistols. The two had a son named Joseph, and Westwood continued to teach until 1971, when Malcolm decided to open a shop, Sex, and this is where Vivienne began to sell her outrageous designs. During this period, Westwood, McLaren, and artist Jamie Reid were influenced by the Situationists.
The punk style began to gain notoriety when the Sex Pistols wore clothes from Westwood and McLaren's shop at their first gig. The 'punk style' included BDSM fashion, bondage gear, safety pins, razor blades, bicycle or lavatory chains on clothing and spiked dog collars that were used as jewelry as well as the outrageous make-up and hair. The inclusion of more traditional elements of British design, such as tartan fabric, amongst the more uncommon elements of her style only served to make the overall effect her designs more shocking.
Together, Westwood and McLaren revolutionized fashion, and the impact is still felt today.
Westwood's first runway show was the Pirate collection in London, in March 1981. Her design style had evolved so that her main interests included not only the youth and street culture but also tradition and technique.
Westwood worked historical factors into her collection by using historical 17th-18th century original cutting principles and modernizing them. This collection was all about 'gold and treasure, adventure and exploration'. Other influences in Westwood's work have included ethnic Peruvian influence, feminine figure, and velvet and knitwear. The historical influence also, was always shown in her work.
In December 2003, she and the Wedgwood pottery company launched a series of tea sets featuring her designs.
Her first major retrospective of her work was shown in 2004-2005 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the National Gallery of Australia. The exhibition is made up of around 145 complete outfits, grouped into the themes which have dominated her work from the early 1970s to the present day and were drawn from her own personal archive and the V&A's extensive collection. They range from early Punk garments to glamorous 'historical' evening gowns. The retrospective is still currently touring the world and is set to continue until 2008.
In September 2005, Westwood joined forces with the British civil rights group Liberty and launched exclusive limited design T-shirts and baby wear bearing the slogan I AM NOT A TERRORIST, please don't arrest me.
Westwood said she was supporting the campaign and defending habeas corpus. "When I was a schoolgirl my history teacher, Mr. Scott, began to take classes in civic affairs. The first thing he explained to us was the fundamental rule of law embodied in habeas corpus. He spoke with pride of civilization and democracy. The hatred of arbitrary arrest by the lettres de cachet of the French monarchy caused the storming of the Bastille. We can only take democracy for granted if we insist on our liberty", she said. The sale of the 50 T-shirts raised funds for the organization.
Her Autumn/winter 2005/06 collection draws inspiration from her archive, reinterpreting designs using Wolford's exclusive knitting technology, who she has worked in close collaboration with since 2003.
Westwood accepted a DBE in the 2006 New Year's Honours List "for services to fashion", and has twice earned the award for British Designer of the Year.
Official Vivienne Westwood website
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Designer Definition (from U.S Department of Labor)
Westwood's path ran through a classroom. Born Vivienne Isabel Swire in Tintwistle, Cheshire, she moved south to Harrow at seventeen, went to teacher training college and taught at a primary school in North London. Her first marriage, to Derek Westwood, gave her the surname the world knows and a son, Ben. She then met Malcolm McLaren, later manager of the Sex Pistols, with whom she had a son, Joseph, and she continued teaching until 1971, when McLaren decided to open a shop and she began selling her designs. The shop on King's Road, known as SEX and Seditionaries, became punk's wardrobe department. When the Sex Pistols wore clothes from the shop at their first gig, the punk style gained its public image: bondage fashion, safety pins, razor blades, bicycle or lavatory chains on clothing and spiked dog collars used as jewelry, with outrageous make-up and hair. The genius of the mixture was the inclusion of traditional British elements such as tartan among the provocations — the familiar made shocking by company, and the shocking made wearable by craft. Westwood and McLaren revolutionised fashion between them, and the impact is still felt today.
Her first runway show, the Pirate collection of March 1981, announced the second Westwood: not only youth and street culture, but tradition and technique. The collection was about gold and treasure, adventure and exploration, and she worked historical factors into it by using historical 17th and 18th century cutting principles and modernising them. That research habit became her mature method — plundering the history of dress the way the Pirates plundered ships, taking period cutting, ethnic Peruvian influence, the feminine figure, velvet and knitwear, and recombining them into clothes that are simultaneously historical and unmistakably hers. The establishment she had scandalised eventually catalogued her: her first major retrospective, around 145 complete outfits drawn from her own archive and the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection, was shown at the V and A in London and the National Gallery of Australia in 2004 to 2005, ranging from early punk garments to historical evening gowns, and in December 2003 she had launched tea sets with the Wedgwood pottery company. Punk's outfitter, collected by the national museum and printed on fine china: the arc is comic and entirely logical, because the technique was always real.
In September 2005 she joined the British civil rights group Liberty to launch limited edition T-shirts and baby wear bearing the slogan I AM NOT A TERRORIST, please do not arrest me, supporting the campaign and defending habeas corpus — the fundamental rule of law, taught to her by her school history teacher, that protects against arbitrary arrest. Fifty T-shirts were sold to raise funds for the organisation. The episode is pure Westwood in method: a political argument carried on a garment, exactly as punk had carried its arguments thirty years earlier, the teacher in her still setting the lesson. She accepted a DBE in the 2006 New Year Honours List for services to fashion, and has twice been British Designer of the Year. The damehood completes the circle that began on King's Road: the designer who dressed a generation's rebellion is an ornament of the establishment she set out to shock — or, as her career suggests, the establishment moved, and she had been right about where it was going.
Westwood designed the clothes sold at Malcolm McLaren's King's Road boutique SEX, which dressed the Sex Pistols. The punk style combined bondage gear, safety pins, razor blades, chains and spiked collars with traditional elements such as tartan.
Her first runway show was the Pirate collection in London in March 1981, about gold and treasure, adventure and exploration, using historical 17th and 18th century cutting principles modernised for the present.
She accepted a DBE in the 2006 New Year Honours List for services to fashion, and has twice earned the award for British Designer of the Year. A major retrospective of around 145 outfits was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2004 to 2005.