Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, died Thursday at the age of 81.
Westwood’s eponymous fashion house announced her death on social media platforms, saying she died peacefully. The cause of death was not disclosed in the statement.
Westwood’s fashion career began in the 1970s with the punk explosion, when his radical approach to urban street style took the world by storm. But she went on to enjoy a long career highlighted by a series of triumphant parades in London, Paris, Milan and New York.
The Westwood name became synonymous with style and attitude even as it changed focus from year to year. His range was wide and his work was never predictable.
As her stature grew, she seemed to transcend fashion, with her designs on display in museum collections around the world. The young woman who had scorned the British establishment eventually became one of her leading figures, and she used her elite position to lobby for environmental reforms even as she kept her hair dyed the bright shade of orange that became in her trademark.
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Andrew Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, said Westwood would be famous for pioneering the punk look, combining a radical fashion approach with the anarchic punk sounds developed by the Sex Pistols, led by his then-partner. , Malcolm McLaren.
“They gave the punk movement a look, a style, and it was so radical that it broke with everything that was in the past,” he said. “The torn shirts, the safety pins, the provocative slogans. She ushered in postmodernism. She’s been so influential since the mid-’70s. The punk movement has never dissipated, it’s become part of our fashion vocabulary. It’s mainstream. now”.
Westwood’s long career was filled with contradictions: she was a lifelong rebel who was honored multiple times by Queen Elizabeth II. She dressed like a teenager even at 60 and became an outspoken supporter of the fight against global warming, warning of planetary doom if climate change went unchecked.
In his punk days, Westwood’s clothing was often intentionally shocking: T-shirts decorated with drawings of naked children and “bondage pants” with sadomasochistic overtones were standard fare in his popular London shops. But Westwood was able to make the transition from punk to high fashion without missing a beat, keeping his career going without stooping to self-caricature.
“She was always trying to reinvent fashion. Her work is provocative, it’s groundbreaking. It’s very rooted in the English tradition of pastiche, irony and satire. She’s very proud of her Englishness and still delivers,” Bolton said. . .
One such controversial and transgressive design featured a swastika, an inverted image of Jesus Christ on the cross, and the word “Destroy.” In an autobiography written with Ian Kelly, he said it was part of a statement against politicians who torture people, citing Chile’s Augusto Pinochet. When asked if he regretted the swastika design in a 2009 interview with Time magazine, Westwood said no.
“I don’t, because we were just saying to the older generation: ‘We don’t accept your values or your taboos, and you are all fascists,'” he replied.
He approached his work with gusto in his early years, but over time he seemed to tire of the clamor and buzz. After decades of design, she sometimes spoke wistfully of moving beyond fashion so she could focus on environmental issues and educational projects.
“Fashion can be very boring,” she told The Associated Press after introducing one of her new collections at a 2010 show. “I’m trying to find something else to do.” At the time, she was talking about plans to start a TV series about art and science.
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