Vivienne Westwood writes: “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.”
If this 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, you should know she is more than just a fashion designer. She’s an artist and an icon. She’s also an activist, the co-creator of punk, a global brand and, as the book describes, a living legend.
Any of the film stars who on the red carpet confess to wearing Westwood will be independent in 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 of her rise to fame in the 1970s when South Africa had relatively little international media communication with the rest of the world, I wasn’t aware of her role with her then-partner Malcolm McLaren – the manager of the infamous band the Sex Pistols – as an instigator of Britain’s popular punk movement. But it all makes sense.
While she came at it from a fashion and stylistic point of view, by her own admission, she didn’t really know what she was doing at the time. 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 laid the foundation for her business which has given her a rare independence allowing her to be an activist without any thought for the commercial repercussions.
That’s the thing with these 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.
Westwood’s childhood was an ordinary one and nobody could have forecast that she 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 inspired her initially, but left her to battle on her own 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 her business today (both her sons included) says that she got a lot of that right.
The children were simply inspired by mom and through their own experiments with life, came to adopt a similar outlook 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 the tone, usually way ahead of the time. She knew where to open her first shops and what would generate excitement and chose to wear her own clothes. Her longevity in the fickle world of fashion is perhaps her best testimonial.
She always stayed true to herself, never compromising in a world that sometimes turned its back on her.
Here’s someone with her own sense of style who has changed not only her own world , but hopes to reach much further.
Vivienne Westwood by Vivienne Westwood and Ian Kelly (Picador, R399)