Vivienne Westwood
By Vivienne Westwood and Ian Kelly
(Picador, R399)
My duty is to understand. To understand the world. This is our exchange for the luck of being alive. From people who have lived before us we can rediscover different visions of the world through art – this is the true meaning of culture – and by comparison, we form our own ideas of a world better than the one we are in, the one that we’ve made a mess of. We can change our future. In the pursuit of ideas you will start to think, and that will change your life. And if you change your life, you change the world. – Vivienne Westwood, 2014
If the Vivienne Westwood quotation doesn’t make you smile and inspire you, this won’t be your kind of book.
She is a designer foremost, but one who wants to make the world – but first herself – better. The one she believes follows the other.
If you haven’t heard of Westwood, fashion isn’t your priority. She’s one of the true artists and in the true sense, an icon. She’s also an activist, the co-creator of punk, a global brand and as the book describes, a true living legend.
Any of the film stars who on the red carpet confess to wearing Westwood will be independent on their dress sense and know how to carry off a certain sense of style.
While Westwood is one of my favourite fashion designers, because of the timing and little international communication on this level in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s (no internet, not even television!), when she and her then partner were the instigators of Britain’s popular punk movement, I wasn’t aware of that side of her. But it all makes sense.
While she came at it from a fashion and stylistic point of view, at the time she didn’t really know what she was doing. But that’s the thing with these kinds of movements, it’s about someone’s passion, their vision, even if at the time, they’re not quite aware of the impact.
But looking back, it also lays the foundation for her business which even today is still rare because of the independence involved and the way she uses her platform to also be an activist without any thought for the commercial repercussions.
That’s the thing with these iconic figures, it’s not only their talent, it’s also their drive and passion. Yes, they do make money (sometimes) but that’s not what pushes them to explore all the boundaries and to create in the extraordinary way they do. It’s all about sheer talent and a belief in what they do.
Like many artists, Westwood’s childhood was an ordinary one and nobody could have forecast that this would be one of the world’s most extravagant fashion forces.
At the beginning of her career, it was very much about survival. Her first husband who did inspire her from the start but in the end left her to battle on her own, did so at a time when she could least afford to go solo. With small children, she had to have a roof over their head as well as food on the table.
The fact that most of her direct family are involved in the business today (both her sons included), says that she got a lot of that right.
The kids were simply inspired by mom and through their own experiments with life, finally reached the same conclusion and joined her in the business.
The thing about Westwood is that she is guided by her own forces. She isn’t told how to toe the fashion line or why to go in a particular direction. She is used to setting much of the tone, usually way ahead of the time.
But those in the know believe that she’s the one to watch if they really want to be on the edge. She knew where to open her first shops, what would get the artists excited and chose to wear her own clothes to show them off to their best advantage.
It also established a Westwood cachet which meant that the trendsetters would immediately follow suit. More than anything, her longevity in perhaps the most fickle world of all is her best testimonial.
There’s also the fact that she always stayed true to herself, never compromised in a world that sometimes turned its back and today can hold her head high and is a revered icon in much more than just a fashion sense.
Check the pictures. Here’s someone with her own sense of style who has changed not only her own world, but hopes to reach much further. If she’s your kind of gal, her ideas will blow your mind. Hers was a life worth living and that’s about as much as one can wish for.
Pretoria News