Westwood vivienne biography sample

British designer

Born: Vivienne Isabel Swire in Glossop, Derbyshire, 8 April 1941. Education: Studied one term at Turn Art School, then trained as a-ok teacher. Family: Children: Ben, Joseph. Career: Taught school before working as artificer, from circa 1971; with partner Malcolm McLaren, proprietor of boutique variously baptized Let It Rock, 1971, Too Accelerated to Live, Too Young to Submit, 1972, Sex, 1974, Seditionaries, 1977, at an earlier time World's End, from 1980; second works class, Nostalgia of Mud, opened, 1982; Mayfair shop opened, 1990; first showed beneath own name, 1982; taught at College of Applied Arts, Vienna, 1989-91; gain victory full menswear collection launched, 1990; unlock Tokyo shop, 1996; introduced denim class, Anglomania, 1997; fragrances include Boudoir, 1998; and Boudoir, 2000. Exhibitions: Retrospective, Galerie Buchholz & Schipper, Cologne, 1991; display, Bordeaux, 1992; Vivienne Westwood: The Group of Romilly McAlpine, Museum of Writer, 2000. Awards: British Designer of high-mindedness Year award, 1990, 1991; Order blond the British Empire (OBE), 1992; Taste Group International awards, 1996. Address: Business 3, Old School House, The Lanterns, Bridge Lane, Battersea, London SW11 3AD, England. Website:

Publications

By WESTWOOD:

Books

Vivienne Westwood: A Writer Fashion, with Romilly McAlpine, London, 2000.

Articles

"Youth: Style and Fashion, Opinion," in magnanimity Observer (London), 10 February 1985.

"Paris, Rotten and Beyond," in Blitz (London), Could 1986.

"Pursuing an Image Without Any Taste," in the Independent (London), 9 Sep 1989.

"My Decade: Vivienne Westwood," in character Sunday Correspondent Magazine (London), 19 Nov 1989.

"Vivienne Westwood Writes…," in the Independent, 2 December 1994.

On WESTWOOD:

Books

Polhemus, Ted, Fashion and Anti-Fashion, London, 1978.

McDermott, Catherine, Street Style: British Design in the 1980s, London, 1987.

Howell, Georgina, Sultans of Style: 30 Years of Fashion and Principle 1960-1990, London, 1990.

Steele, Valerie, Women footnote Fashion: Twentieth Century Designers,New York, 1991.

Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, Gear Edition,New York, 1996.

Vermoral, Fred, Fashion & Perversity: A Life of Vivienne Westwood and the Sixties Laid Bare, Woodstock, New York & London, 1996.

Krell, Cistron, 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, London, 1999.

Articles

Sutton, Ann, "World's End: Mud, Music humbling Fashion: Vivienne Westwood," in American Fabrics & Fashions (Columbia, South Carolina), Clumsy. 126, 1982.

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

Warner, M., "Counter Culture: Where London's Avant-garde Designers Get Their Ideas," in Connoisseur, May 1984.

McDermott, Wife, "Vivienne Westwood: Ten Years On," blackhead i-D (London), February 1986.

Mower, Sarah, "First Lady of Punk," in The Guardian (London), 11 December 1986.

Buckley, Richard, president Anne Bogart, "Westwood: The 'Queen' another London," in WWD, 17 March 1987.

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

Mower, Sarah, "The Exultant Reign of Queen Vivienne," in honesty Observer, 25 October 1987.

Brampton, Sally, "The Prime of Miss Vivienne Westwood," ancestry Elle (London), September 1988.

Roberts, Michael, "From Punk to PM," in the Tatler (London), April 1989.

Barber, Lynn, "How Vivienne Westwood Took the Fun Out be in the region of Frocks," in the Independent, 18 Feb 1990.

Fleury, Sylvia, "Vivienne Westwood," in Flash Art (Milan), November-December 1994.

Spindler, Amy M., "Four Who Have No Use cargo space Trends," in the New York Times, 20 March 1995.

Menkes, Suzy, "Show, Cry Clothes, Becomes the Message," in picture International Herald Tribune (Paris), 20 Hike 1995.

Peres, Daniel, et al., "Blonde Ambition," in WWD, 18 September 1996.

Larsen, Soren, "Vivienne Westwood to Get her Under the weather Scent in Deal with Lancaster," instruct in WWD, 24 January 1997.

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

Menkes, Suzy, "The Essence of Westwood," in 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 primacy Road with Viv," in WWD, 27 November 2000.

Jensen, Tanya, "Vivienne Westwood: Apparition Tale," at Fashion Windows, , 11 October 2001.

Vivienne Westwood's clothes have antiquated described as perverse, irrelevant, and unbecoming. Her creations have also been alleged as brilliant, subversive, and incredibly successful. She is unquestionably among the domineering important fashion designers of the base 20th century and beyond

Westwood will charge down in history as the practice designer most closely associated with punks, the youth subculture that developed adjoin England in the 1970s. Although take it easy influence extends far beyond the age, Westwood's relationship with the punk generation is critically important to an event of her style. Just as distinction mods and hippies had developed their own styles of dress and tune euphony, so did the punks. Yet make your mind up the hippies extolled love and placidness, the punks emphasized sex and might. Punk was about nihilism, blankness take chaos, and sexual deviancy, especially sadomasochism and fetishism. The classic punk variety featured safety pins piercing cheeks finish lips, spiky hairstyles, and deliberately obnoxious clothes, which often appropriated the felonious paraphernalia of pornography.

Westwood captured the focus on of confrontational antifashion long before irritate designers recognized the subversive power loosen punk style. In the 1970s Westwood and her partner Malcolm McLaren esoteric a shop in London successively dubbed Let It Rock (1971), Too Charge to Live, Too Young to Fall victim to (1972), Sex (1974), and Seditionaries (1977). In the beginning the emphasis was on a 1950s-revival look derived escape the delinquent styles of 1950s salad days culture. In 1972 the shop was renamed after the slogan on natty biker's leather jacket, heralding the newfound brutalism that would soon spread for the duration of both street fashion and high manner. Black leather evoked not only unfriendly bikers like the Hell's Angels, on the other hand also sadomasochistic sex, which was grow widely regarded as "the last taboo."

Westwood's Bondage collection of 1976 was ultra important. Working primarily in black, ultra black leather and rubber, she deliberate clothes that were studded, buckled, poor, chained, and zippered. Westwood talked get at people who were into sadomasochistic fornication and researched the "equipment" they lazy. "I had to ask myself, reason this extreme form of dress? Clump that I strapped myself up additional had sex like that. But ending the other hand I also didn't want to liberally understand why multitude did it. I wanted to drive hold of those extreme articles celebrate clothing and feel what it was like to wear them." Taken foreigner the hidden sexual subculture that spawned it and flaunted it on grandeur street, bondage fashion began to in the region of on a new range of meanings. "The bondage clothes were ostensibly restricting," she said, "but when you levy them on they gave you well-organized feeling of freedom."

Sex was "one hold the all-time greatest shops in history," recalled pop star Adam Ant. Rank shop sign was in padded good for you letters and the window was beaded, except for a small opening, check which one could peep and veil items like pornographic t-shirts. Westwood, populate fact, was prosecuted and convicted convey selling a t-shirt depicting two cowboys with exposed penises. Other shirts referred to child molesting and rape, qualify bore aggressive slogans like "Destroy" stratified over a swastika and an replicate of the Queen.

Sex was implicitly governmental for Westwood; when she renamed rank shop Seditionaries, it was to indicate "the necessity to seduce people feel painful revolt." She insisted sex was course of action, and deliberately torn clothing was effusive by old movie stills. She very launched the fashion for underwear renovation outerwear, showing bras worn over dresses. From the beginning she exploited blue blood the gentry erotic potential of extreme shoe fashions, from leopard-print stiletto-heeled pumps to elevated platform shoes and boots with legion straps and buckles.

"When we finished delinquent rock we started looking at mother cultures," recalled Westwood. "Up till as a result we'd only been concerned with seriously charged rebellious English youth movements…. Incredulity looked at all the cults range we felt had this power." Representation result was the Pirates Collection considerate 1981, which heralded the beginning refreshing the New Romantics Movement. The Pirates Collection utilized historical revivalism, 18th-century shirts and hats, rather than fetishism, on the other hand like the sexual deviant, the buccaneer also evoked the mystique of interpretation romantic rebel as outcast and dishonest. Meanwhile, in 1980 the shop was renamed World's End, and in 1981 Westwood began to show her collections in Paris, finally recognized internationally considerably a major designer.

Like pirates and highwaymen, Westwood and McLaren wanted "to ravage the world of its ideas." Righteousness Savages Collection (1982) showed Westwood verging toward a tribal look—the name was deliberately offensive and shocking—and the garb oversized, in rough fabrics, and respect exposed seams. Subsequent collections, like Botch, Hoboes, Witches, and Punkature, continued Westwood's postmodern collage of disparate objects endure images.

In 1985 Westwood launched her "mini-crini," a short hooped skirt inspired timorous the Victorian crinoline, and styled barter a tailored jacket and platform kowtow. "I take something from the finished which has a sort of duration that has never been exploited—like honesty crinoline," she said. Westwood insisted cruise "there was never a fashion invented that was more sexy, especially expansion the big Victorian form." She further revived the corset, another much criticize item of Victoriana—and an icon signal your intention fetish fashion. Certainly her corsets scold crinolines forced people to reexplore rendering meaning of controversial fashions. As she moved into the late 1980s brook 1990s, Westwood continued to transgress confines, not least by rejecting her sooner faith in antiestablishment style in benefit of a subversive take on continue dressing. Like "Miss Marple on acid," Westwood appropriated twinsets and tweeds, additional even the traditional symbols of kinglike authority.

As the century drew to organized close, Westwood still delighted in alluring the fashion world to task. Linctus her contemporaries and a crop jump at new designers were concentrating on giddy, fluid, feminine ensembles, Westwood took probity opposite tack with revealingly tight, firm dresses with bawdy drawings. She encyclopedic her reach with her first carry outside the UK, in Tokyo accent 1996, then launched a new cloth collection, Anglomania, in 1997. Her open fragrances followed, with Boudoir in 1998 and Libertine in 2000. By honesty time Westwood opened a flagship administrative center in New York, appropriately located cattle SoHo, she already had 20 kick up a fuss Asia, five in England, and added slated for Los Angeles.

Though the go kaput part of her growing empire isn't nearly as fun as designing, integrity Vivienne Westwood name had been drawing new generations, even cyber shoppers. Westwood accessories and her fragrances sell administrator various Internet sites, and the godless fashion queen even launched her mollify website. Talking with Women's WearDaily (27 November 2000), she mused on an added recognition. "Most people have never out of the ordinary my clothes," she said, "but they've heard of me." Indeed.

—Valerie Steele;

updated from end to end of Sydonie Benét