Happy birthday Vivienne Westwood, 80 years of an icon that does not age - Lifestyle

Eighty years and not hear them.

Born in the English Midlands

, Vivienne Westwood turns the buoy of her eighth decade of life 'young at heart', no one can deny it.

It is the combative spirit and the irreverent sense of style that allow her to remain a protagonist in the history of world costume after half a century of a career in strong colors.

In a 2021 that multiplies the anniversaries for the matriarch of British fashion: sealing, in addition to the round birthday, the 50th anniversary of her thunderous debut in Swinging London and the 40th anniversary of the first catwalk show destined to consecrate her rebel queen of the British fashion.

    Daughter of a couple of textile workers from Derbyshire, she began designing clothes in 1971 with her partner Malcom McLaren, selling them in the historic London boutique at 430 Kings Road, which would have changed its name and furnishings several times, reflecting the creative evolution of the duo. .

From Let it Rock to Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, when the first collections were inspired by rockers among whom the designer had already made numerous followers like Ringo Starr, up to the explicit Sex: with leather dresses, t-shirts of rubber, chains and risque images that cause such a scandal to force the police to close the shutters of the shop.

But the future lady Vivienne and her partner did not give up and in '76 they reopened the doors of the cult store, this time renaming it Seditionaires, a play on words between seduction and sedition, complete with a collection of the same name capable of defining Punk culture.

    These are the years in which McLaren becomes the manager of a new revolutionary band, the Sex Pistols, a musical group symbol of the punk movement that adopts the stylistic code of Queen Viv, or the concept of fashion as a tool to fight against the establishment.

Starting with Queen Elizabeth herself, mocked in the scream of the immortal hit God Save The Queen.

In 1981, the designer parades for the first time on the catwalk: the collection is called Pirates and inaugurates a new season of her creative language, the New Romantic.

After the crests, pins and nails of the 70s rebels, come the corsets, the crinolines, the baskets of the hedonistic Eighties.

While the rise of the star Westwood continues unstoppable.

In 1982 she was the first Englishwoman after Mary Quant to be included in the Paris fashion show calendar.

The Ville Lumiere will be the theater of the memorable fall - entered in the annals of fashion - of Naomi Campbell, tripping over the vertiginous wedges of Vivienne's platforms "designed to hoist female beauty on a pedestal".

A pedestal on which to climb is in fact also the creator, who in 1992 is received by Elizabeth II herself, almost as in a meeting between sovereigns, and awarded - despite the past confrontations of the punk era - with the prestigious Order of the British Empire (OBE) for its artistic merits;

an honor and a title that the new lady Viv accepts with apparent respect for the etiquette, except to surprise the photographers at the end of the ceremony with a provocative lift of a nude look skirt.

In the same year, the designer married one of her students at the Vienna School of Fashion, Andreas Kronthaler, 25 years younger, who from that moment became the trusted right hand until he inherited the creative direction of the brand in 2016.

    A brand consolidated over time as a platform for communication and progressive civil commitment under the banner of slogans such as "Make Love, not Fashion" or "Buy less, choose well, make it last".

It has been transformed in recent years into a vehicle for public opinion awareness campaigns on issues such as the battle against extreme consumerism, for the environment, against the effects of climate change, for peace, in defense of Julian Assange's freedom.

    Challenges conducted not only in words or provocations, after all, but also in the concrete choices of collections now made with eco-sustainable materials and production methods.

Because there is no doubt that, in the trenches of 80 years, the rebellious spirit of the former Queen of punk remains alive and well.

His mission now?

A Green Revolution to fight "the war for the survival of the human race and the planet".

Happy birthday, Lady Viv.

(HANDLE).