Vivienne Westwood, the queen of punk, the rebel stylist who at over 80 still participated in strikes and protests making her scathing voice heard by politicians and powerful, died yesterday in London .
She was 81 years old and had been ill for some time, she spent her last hours talking about the planet and what needs to be done to save it. Voice out of the choir, rebellious by nature. Lately she had expressed herself on Julian Assange ("He is a hero treated atrociously by the British government") and on capitalism ("A crime, the main cause of war, climate change and corruption").
She was born in Derbyshire, the daughter of textile workers, Gordon and Dora Swire, a simple couple who lived in the English countryside. But the red-haired girl had character to spare and as soon as she landed in the city she would become the queen of punk, dressing generations of rebellious youth first with leather and studs and then with eighteenth-century corsets and panniers .
Vivienne Westwood arrived in London at 17, but dropped out of university, finding it boring. At 21, she married Derek Westwood and had one son. Then he met Malcolm McLaren, the musician who would become the impresario of the Sex Pistols. With him, Vivienne would become the most nonconformist designer in the United Kingdom : with Malcolm she opened a boutique at 430 King's Road, the sanctuary of London's rebellious generation of that period.
The shop changed its name several times: from "Let it Rock", "Too fast to live, too fast to die" to "Sex" and created several scandals. As in 1974, when for a hard collection, made of leather clothes and latex T-shirts, chains and fetish T-shirts, the police closed the place with seals .
Several times irreverent towards Queen Elizabeth, but in 1992 she awarded her the title of Dame of the Order of the British Empire. At the ceremony, the designer lifted her skirt and showed photographers that she wasn't wearing lingerie .
Even her fashion was always over the top, like her: " The only reason I do fashion is to tear the word conformism to pieces ", she loved to repeat.
He also opened an atelier in Paris. And she was divided between London, France and Vienna, where she held a professorship: in the Austrian capital she met her future husband, Andreas Kronthaler, her student at the fashion school, 25 years her junior. They married shortly after, during a lunch break in London. He became her assistant to whom she handed over the creative direction in 2016.
But not to retire. "Stop talking about clothes," she warned, addressing anyone who approached her to talk about fashion. As she got older she was increasingly preoccupied with social problems .
The non-profit Vivienne Foundation, founded by Westwood in late 2022, with his children and grandson, will be officially launched next year to honor, protect and continue the legacy of life, design and activism of Vivienne. The goal is to raise awareness and create tangible change by working with NGOs, building on four pillars: climate change, stop war, defend human rights and protest against capitalism .
His latest warning: « Stop climate change. This is a war for the very existence of the human race. And that of the planet . The most important weapon we have is public opinion. Become a freedom fighter."
(Unioneonline/L)
