My favourite fashion brand: Vivienne Westwood
The architect of punk fashion, the campaigner for activism, the link between past, present and future told through the reworking of styles from history – that is Vivienne Westwood.
As a young girl growing up in a working-class family Vivienne had no dreams of becoming a world renown fashion icon. While starting her working life as a primary school teacher, she also made jewellery and sold the pieces at a stall in Portobello Road (which is still to this day an iconic London landmark). However, during her marriage to Sex Pistols manager Malcom McLaren she began making clothing that he designed, and they displayed in their store. This gained them increased recognition as the band began wearing their creations. As a result, their store, named SEX, became a meeting place for early members of the London punk scene such as Sid Vicious, Chrissie Hynde and Pamela Rooke. The most well-known products sold at SEX were purposefully ripped or bleached T-shirts depicting controversial images that confronted social and sexual taboos which the punk era of the 70s became synonymous with.
While being the fashion icon she is, Vivienne Westwood is also a prominent activist and campaigns for many political and social subjects such as climate change, clean energy and consumerism. The mission statement for the company is to ‘promote awareness and campaign for a better world’ highlighting her beliefs. She appeared in a PETA ad campaign promoting vegetarianism and World Water Day in order to bring to attention the meat industry’s water consumption. Furthermore, in 2014 Westwood became a majority stakeholder and ambassador for the equity crowdfunding platform Trillion Fund which raises money for environmental and social projects.
One of Westwood’s most famed pieces is the corset top. Originating in the 1600s corsets were a prominent item of clothing worn by women and while the ideology behind it remained the same the structure changed over the years to accommodate each era’s preferred female silhouette. Vivienne Westwood’s revival of the corset for her Harris Tweed collection in 1987, after it hadn’t been fashionable since the 50s/60s, cemented her iconic design style and fulfilled her aim of becoming a link between past, present and future.