British designer and costume designer Vivienne Westwood, responsible for bringing punk style into fashion, died on Thursday (29/12), aged 81. The announcement of her death was spread on her social networks.
“Vivienne Westwood passed away today, peacefully and surrounded by her family, in Clapham, south London,” the post on her Twitter read. “The world needs people like Vivienne to change for the better.”
Vivienne Isabel Swire (her given name) was born on April 8, 1941 in Derbyshire, England. When she was 17, she moved to London, where she met her first husband, divorced her and partnered with Malcolm McLaren, whom she also married.
Inspired by 1950s rock, Vivienne and Malcolm set up their first shop, “Let it Rock”. The business didn’t take off, and after new inspiration in the S&M (sadomosochistic) scene, the boutique was renamed “SEX” and started selling fetish clothes. Over time, he began to create clothes that expressed the anger of the marginalized youth of the London suburbs.
To advertise the business, he turned some of these young men into walking models, luring several teenagers to his shop looking for free clothes, including future members of the Sex Pistols band. Former manager of the American band New York Dolls, Malcolm McLaren managed to convince young people to become rockers, while Vivianne took care of creating the look of the new band.
The ripped clothes, riveted belts, boots, frayed jeans, spiky hair, and used-everywhere safety pin soon made their way from the Pistols’ outfits into the fashion world, inspiring the look of the punk movement.
With the impact, members of other bands went after Vivienne so that she too could make them hip. Others didn’t even need to. Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders was an employee of hers at her shop.
In her memoir, Viv Albertine, leader of the Slits, wrote that “Vivienne and Malcolm wear clothes to shock, irritate and provoke a reaction, but also to inspire change. Fashion, cropped and handwritten shirts, stitching and labels on the outside, which show the construction of the piece, these attitudes are reflected in the music we make. It’s okay not to be perfect, to show the workings of your life and your mind in their songs and clothes”.
At the end of the 80s, the designer divorced from McLaren and reinvented herself. In 1981 she launched her first haute couture collection, “Pirates”, characterized by looks with cuts inspired by the courts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The look that romanticized the historical period also influenced rock, launching the new romantic movement, a moment of the new wave in which artists began to dress in period clothes, such as Adam and the Ants (band directed by Malcolm McLaren), with details such as frills like Duran Duran, and feminine dresses and makeup embraced like Boy George (her model) from Culture Club.
He continued to provoke. In 1987 you tackled male eroticism in a new collection. In 1994 she held a fashion show with models with bare buttocks. The plaid flannel style she adopted in her own pieces in the ’90s has also become all the rage. And she continued to tease, eventually releasing T-shirts with protest slogans like “I’m not a terrorist, please don’t arrest me” in 2005.
The center of British fashion for at least three decades, Vivienne ended up being honored by Queen Elizabeth II with the title of Lady – ironically, she was the one who created the iconic anti-monarchist image on the cover of the ‘God Save the Queen’ single. , by the Pistols.
Its impact has reached even Hollywood. He developed the costumes for the films “Despedida em Las Vegas” (1995), “Matadores de Aluguel” (2005) and “Boy George – A Vida é Meu Palco” (2010), biography of the Culture Club singer, as well as collaborating with Madonna in the video for “Rain” (1993). Always attracting famous musicians, he has even worn suits on the body of singer Harry Styles in recent years.
Recently, his story has been told in several documentaries – the best of which is “Westwood – Punk, Icon, Activist” (2018), directed by Lorna Tucker (“Amá”) – and addressed in the fiction “Pistol”, available on Star+, focused on his punk phase.
Watch the documentary and series trailers below.
+The best content in your email for free. Choose your favorite Terra newsletter. Click here!
Source: Terra
Amanda Larkin is a celebrity journalist at Gossipify, known for her in-depth interviews and unique perspectives on the entertainment industry. She covers celebrity news and gossip, providing readers with engaging and informative content, and understanding of the inner workings of the industry. She’s respected for keeping readers up to date with the latest trends and providing a fresh perspective on the celebrity world.
