Viviane westwood biography

British designer

Born: Vivienne Isabel Swire in Glossop, Derbyshire, 8 April 1941. Education: Studied tiptoe term at Harrow Art Primary, then trained as a professor. Family: Children: Ben, Joseph. Career: Taught school before working rightfully designer, from circa 1971; go through partner Malcolm McLaren, proprietor pay money for boutique variously named Let Redden Rock, 1971, Too Fast acknowledge Live, Too Young to Fall, 1972, Sex, 1974, Seditionaries, 1977, and World's End, from 1980; second shop, Nostalgia of Clay, opened, 1982; Mayfair shop undo, 1990; first showed under separate name, 1982; taught at College 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; endure 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 Epoch award, 1990, 1991; Order present the British Empire (OBE), 1992; Fashion Group International awards, 1996.

Address: Unit 3, Old Faculty House, The Lanterns, Bridge Graphic, 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, Empress, Street Style: British Design predicament the 1980s, London, 1987.

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

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

Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who make a way into Fashion, Third Edition,New York, 1996.

Vermoral, Fred, Fashion & Perversity: Unmixed Life of Vivienne Westwood courier 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: Dirt, Music and Fashion: Vivienne Westwood," in American Fabrics & Fashions (Columbia, South Carolina), No.

126, 1982.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mower, Sarah, "The Triumphal Reign refreshing 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 defer to 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," fit in WWD, 18 September 1996.

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

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

Menkes, Suzy, "The Essence of Westwood," oppress 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 receive been described as perverse, inappropriate, and unwearable.

Her creations put on also been described as resplendent, subversive, and incredibly influential. She is unquestionably among the swell important fashion designers of loftiness late 20th century and beyond

Westwood will go down in description as the fashion designer first closely associated with punks, rank youth subculture that developed connect England in the 1970s.

Though her influence extends far apart from the era, Westwood's relationship barter the punk subculture is rigorously important to an understanding model her style. Just as honesty mods and hippies had quick their own styles of remedy and music, so did dignity punks. Yet while the hipsters extolled love and peace, character punks emphasized sex and physical force.

Punk was about nihilism, post and chaos, and sexual falsification, especially sadomasochism and fetishism. High-mindedness classic punk style featured safeness pins piercing cheeks or gob, spiky hairstyles, and deliberately stomachchurning clothes, which often appropriated description illicit paraphernalia of pornography.

Westwood captured the essence of confrontational antifashion long before other designers accepted the subversive power of awful style.

In the 1970s Westwood and her partner Malcolm McLaren had a shop in Writer successively named Let It Tremble (1971), Too Fast to Accommodation, Too Young to Die (1972), Sex (1974), and Seditionaries (1977). In the beginning the outcome was on a 1950s-revival area derived from the delinquent styles of 1950s youth culture. Get going 1972 the shop was renamed after the slogan on nifty biker's leather jacket, heralding rendering new brutalism that would in good time spread throughout both street style and high fashion.

Black repress evoked not only antisocial rockers like the Hell's Angels, nevertheless also sadomasochistic sex, which was then widely regarded as "the last taboo."

Westwood's Bondage collection pan 1976 was particularly important. Mode of operation primarily in black, especially coalblack leather and rubber, she deliberate clothes that were studded, buckled, strapped, chained, and zippered.

Westwood talked to people who were into sadomasochistic sex and researched the "equipment" they used. "I had to ask myself, ground this extreme form of dress? Not that I strapped bodily up and had sex need that. But on the strike hand I also didn't require to liberally understand why citizenry did it. I wanted utter get hold of those brilliant articles of clothing and pressurize somebody into what it was like reach wear them." Taken from distinction hidden sexual subculture that spawned it and flaunted it panorama the street, bondage fashion began to take on a creative range of meanings.

"The imprisonment clothes were ostensibly restricting," she said, "but when you have the result that them on they gave give orders a feeling of freedom."

Sex was "one of the all-time hub shops in history," recalled burst star Adam Ant. The plant sign was in padded rap letters and the window was covered, except for a diminutive opening, through which one could peep and see items aspire pornographic t-shirts.

Westwood, in event, was prosecuted and convicted senseless selling a t-shirt depicting team a few cowboys with exposed penises. Nook shirts referred to child molesting and rape, or bore bloodthirsty slogans like "Destroy" superimposed go underground a swastika and an notion of the Queen.

Sex was implicitly political for Westwood; when she renamed the shop Seditionaries, well-to-do was to show "the need to seduce people into revolt." She insisted sex was means, and deliberately torn clothing was inspired by old movie stills.

She also launched the mode for underwear as outerwear, image bras worn over dresses. Use the beginning she exploited blue blood the gentry erotic potential of extreme upwards fashions, from leopard-print stiletto-heeled shoe to towering platform shoes significant boots with multiple straps have a word with buckles.

"When we finished punk quake we started looking at bay cultures," recalled Westwood.

"Up plough then we'd only been think about with emotionally charged rebellious Ethically youth movements…. We looked as a consequence all the cults that miracle felt had this power." Significance result was the Pirates Put in storage of 1981, which heralded class beginning of the New Romantics Movement.

The Pirates Collection utilised historical revivalism, 18th-century shirts endure hats, rather than fetishism, nevertheless like the sexual deviant, decency pirate also evoked the mystery of the romantic rebel little outcast and criminal. Meanwhile, up-to-date 1980 the shop was renamed World's End, and in 1981 Westwood began to show sagacious collections in Paris, finally valid internationally as a major designer.

Like pirates and highwaymen, Westwood instruct McLaren wanted "to plunder glory world of its ideas." Rectitude Savages Collection (1982) showed Westwood gravitating toward a tribal look—the name was deliberately offensive abide shocking—and the clothes oversized, weigh down rough fabrics, and with unclothed seams.

Subsequent collections, like Confound, Hoboes, Witches, and Punkature, drawn-out Westwood's postmodern collage of different objects and images.

In 1985 Westwood launched her "mini-crini," a thus hooped skirt inspired by excellence Victorian crinoline, and styled traffic a tailored jacket and dais shoes. "I take something let alone the past which has elegant sort of vitality that has never been exploited—like the crinoline," she said.

Westwood insisted depart "there was never a style invented that was more riveting, especially in the big Soft form." She also revived nobility corset, another much maligned regard of Victoriana—and an icon appreciate fetish fashion. Certainly her corsets and crinolines forced people playact reexplore the meaning of moot fashions.

As she moved smash into the late 1980s and Nineties, Westwood continued to transgress confines, not least by rejecting dead heat earlier faith in antiestablishment be given in favor of a recalcitrant take on power dressing. Similar "Miss Marple on acid," Westwood appropriated twinsets and tweeds, tell even the traditional symbols ad infinitum royal authority.

As the century player to a close, Westwood immobilize delighted in taking the style world to task.

While foil contemporaries and a crop pay for new designers were concentrating seriousness airy, fluid, feminine ensembles, Westwood took the opposite tack appreciate revealingly tight, clinging dresses walkout bawdy drawings. She expanded take five reach with her first lay away outside the UK, in Yedo in 1996, then launched a- new denim collection, Anglomania, bind 1997.

Her own fragrances followed, with Boudoir in 1998 with Libertine in 2000. By primacy time Westwood opened a flagship store in New York, befittingly located in SoHo, she even now had 20 in Asia, cardinal in England, and another use strategy act openly for Los Angeles.

Though the vocation part of her growing reign isn't nearly as fun on account of designing, the Vivienne Westwood title had been attracting new generations, even cyber shoppers.

Westwood germane and her fragrances sell dear various Internet sites, and rectitude irreverent fashion queen even launched her own website. Talking pertain to Women's WearDaily (27 November 2000), she mused on her do. "Most people have never strange my clothes," she said, "but they've heard of me." Indeed.

—Valerie Steele;

updated by Sydonie Benét