A restrospective exhibition tracing the amazing life
and times of Vivienne Westwood opens at the De
Young in San Francisco. The iconic British designer
Vivienne Westwood epitomises cool. She virtually
invented punk. She had a shop on London's King's
Road called SEX long before anyone else dared be
so audacious.
She uses words such as "iconoclastic" and
"teleological" without thinking and drops names such
as de Tocqueville and Huxley.
She went to receive her OBE from Queen Elizabeth
wearing a skirt and no knickers, then did a pirouette
for photographers. She has a handsome lover, 25
years her junior, wears only her own clothes and
cycles rather than drives around London.
Her office has tartan carpet, she's 66 and she still
wears a mini well.
On the other hand, she admits being scared of going
too far in her early design days when she and
Malcolm McLaren made clothes with dangerous,
anti-establishment slogans.
And, these days, she prefers staying home to
socialising or taking holidays.
She's a happy bookworm who thinks "life has no
meaning".
She admits it took her a long, long time to get over
her last broken heart.
Ever more famous for her designs, which span
breeches and platform shoes, pirate boots, ruffles,
corsets, "mini crinis" and evening gowns, Westwood
comes complete with garish yellow hair and a broad
northern accent.
Her office in South London buzzes quietly with
students and designers. There's a Scottie dog under
her desk who belongs to her lover-business partner,
Andreas, and, today, she is absorbing the fact that
her lifelong friend and mentor, Gary Ness, is dying.
I didn't want to be a fashion designer. It was a
chore."He directed my reading list over the years.
He's been the most important person in my life. He
gave me knowledge."
and times of Vivienne Westwood opens at the De
Young in San Francisco. The iconic British designer
Vivienne Westwood epitomises cool. She virtually
invented punk. She had a shop on London's King's
Road called SEX long before anyone else dared be
so audacious.
She uses words such as "iconoclastic" and
"teleological" without thinking and drops names such
as de Tocqueville and Huxley.
She went to receive her OBE from Queen Elizabeth
wearing a skirt and no knickers, then did a pirouette
for photographers. She has a handsome lover, 25
years her junior, wears only her own clothes and
cycles rather than drives around London.
Her office has tartan carpet, she's 66 and she still
wears a mini well.
On the other hand, she admits being scared of going
too far in her early design days when she and
Malcolm McLaren made clothes with dangerous,
anti-establishment slogans.
And, these days, she prefers staying home to
socialising or taking holidays.
She's a happy bookworm who thinks "life has no
meaning".
She admits it took her a long, long time to get over
her last broken heart.
Ever more famous for her designs, which span
breeches and platform shoes, pirate boots, ruffles,
corsets, "mini crinis" and evening gowns, Westwood
comes complete with garish yellow hair and a broad
northern accent.
Her office in South London buzzes quietly with
students and designers. There's a Scottie dog under
her desk who belongs to her lover-business partner,
Andreas, and, today, she is absorbing the fact that
her lifelong friend and mentor, Gary Ness, is dying.
I didn't want to be a fashion designer. It was a
chore."He directed my reading list over the years.
He's been the most important person in my life. He
gave me knowledge."
"I'm incredibly proud of it all. Not just the actual show, but
of what was in the archives. I'd see outfits and I'd think,
'What a thing!'."
"I did one show I hated, a few years ago. Even as I was
dressing the girls to send them out on the runway, I didn't
love it at all. Then a few days later, I saw pictures of it in
the paper and thought it was so wonderful. I thought, 'Only
I could have done that'. Then I decided anything I do will be
OK."
This retrospective, she says, is the nearest thing fans will
ever get to a Westwood biography. She has no plans to
write one: "I can't remember half of what went on, for a
start."
The reason is simple. She got into design in the early
1970s because her boyfriend at the time, McLaren (later to
found the Sex Pistols and, with Westwood, "invent" punk)
had some ideas for garments, and needed help making
them up. An insideout, ripped T-shirt here, some rubber
clothes there.
"I knew how to make clothes because I'd done it when I was
a teenager. But I didn't want to be a fashion designer. It
was a chore. I used to be doing it and just thinking that,
when I'd finished, I could read my book, which was all I was
interested in doing."
Her mind is on Ness. One of the things he taught her, she says, is
that there are no new ideas. We must all research the past, to be
original in the present.
"You don't get ideas in a vacuum. Reynolds copied Titian who
probably copied someone else. You can't overthrow tradition. All
these young people who've been to fashion school and think they're
reinventing the wheel . . ." She sighs.
No matter what she thinks about the past, she certainly seems quite
cut off from the present. She doesn't watch TV, condemns reading
magazines as "a waste of minutes of your life" and doesn't listen to
music - "unless I have a show coming up and need to decide on a
theme".
She only found out who Britney Spears is after seeing her in
Fahrenheit 9/11 and says real culture "had its swan song in the last
half of the 19th century, in France, and hasn't been seen since".
She believes you can't have any ideas about anything unless
you've read Bertrand "Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence"
Russell, and that boring people wear boring clothes.
that there are no new ideas. We must all research the past, to be
original in the present.
"You don't get ideas in a vacuum. Reynolds copied Titian who
probably copied someone else. You can't overthrow tradition. All
these young people who've been to fashion school and think they're
reinventing the wheel . . ." She sighs.
No matter what she thinks about the past, she certainly seems quite
cut off from the present. She doesn't watch TV, condemns reading
magazines as "a waste of minutes of your life" and doesn't listen to
music - "unless I have a show coming up and need to decide on a
theme".
She only found out who Britney Spears is after seeing her in
Fahrenheit 9/11 and says real culture "had its swan song in the last
half of the 19th century, in France, and hasn't been seen since".
She believes you can't have any ideas about anything unless
you've read Bertrand "Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence"
Russell, and that boring people wear boring clothes.
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