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Mourning Vivienne Westwood: The Queen of Rebellion

2022-12-30T13:26:59.903Z


Mourning Vivienne Westwood: The Queen of Rebellion Created: 12/30/2022, 2:17 p.m By: Katja Kraft Vivienne Westwood demonstrated for environmental protection and human rights into old age - like here in London in 2015. © A-way!/Allphoto The idiosyncratic British star designer Vivienne Westwood has died at the age of 81. Our obituary for the punk rebel who changed the world of fashion. Vivienne


Mourning Vivienne Westwood: The Queen of Rebellion

Created: 12/30/2022, 2:17 p.m

By: Katja Kraft

Vivienne Westwood demonstrated for environmental protection and human rights into old age - like here in London in 2015.

© A-way!/Allphoto

The idiosyncratic British star designer Vivienne Westwood has died at the age of 81.

Our obituary for the punk rebel who changed the world of fashion.

Vivienne Westwood.

Dead.

And the feelings of the author of these lines completely mixed up.

Because this year 2022, it was supposed to be her personal “Vivienne Westwood Year”.

Or better: the twelve months from April 8, 2022 to April 8, 2023. April 8: her birthday and that of the star designer.

And because life somehow had to come back to the place after all this Corona madness, it was clear: An extra portion of Vivienne is needed to restart everyday life as we used to know it.

Who could have been a better inspiration than this bird-like total work of art by a woman?

Westwood, April Incarnate: She did as she pleases.

Pop Culture: Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City in a Vivienne Westwood dress.

© imago stock

The “Vivienne Westwood Year” was quickly announced to the world.

For the birthday bash, the best friend gave what a real best friend gives after such an announcement: “Catwalk”, illustrated book of all (!) the fashion artist's collections.

So inspired, they headed downtown, willing to shell out big bucks for a Vivienne Westwood dress.

But lo and behold: you can forget.

Oh, Munich, not ready for so much (fashion) rebellion?

Yes, the Westwood loved to provoke.

Her father was a shoemaker and her mother a cotton spinner. Vivienne, who was born near Manchester in 1941, always wanted to be one thing: an artist.

Although she dropped out of her art studies after one semester, she became a creator even without a university certificate.

In 1970, together with her second husband Malcolm McLaren, who later became manager of the Sex Pistols, she opened a store on London's King's Road, selling records and fashion she designed.

He became the meeting point of the punk rock scene.

And Westwood to her icon.

The young savages loved their creations of safety pins, net shirts and studded bracelets.

This is how she became the inventor of the punk look.

Vivienne Westwood often used tartan patterns – for example on a skirt for Thomas Gottschalk.

© STEFAN MENNE

She taught herself how to design.

She simply did what she had done as a girl with her school uniform: add provocative details to the existing ones.

Unpick seams to understand patterns - and create something new based on your own designs.

This woman may have been proclaimed a Dame by the Queen in 2006, but she remained punk at heart.

One who wore no underwear even during the royal ceremony.

It's a well-told story: On the day of the award, when photographers asked her to spin in circles so that her skirt would fly Marilyn Monroe-like for the photos, they discovered underneath - nothing.

Because Westwood never wore panties under her skirt.

Maybe out of provocation, maybe out of convenience.

In any case: because she didn't allow herself to be dictated to.

Vivienne Westwood lived modestly in London

She danced between the worlds and always stayed true to herself.

Between pop culture and the underground, between the royal family and the working class, between the catwalk and the Vienna Burgtheater.

For 30 years she lived modestly in London;

was incessantly committed to climate protection, peace, human rights, and pleaded for "less is more" - instead of buying cheap clothes in bulk, she appealed, one should prefer high-quality, durable pieces.

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Fancy a voyage of discovery?

My space

Would you like to!

And prefer to wrap yourself in all the playful costumes that shine at you in the illustrated book “Catwalk”.

My god, those winged shoes!

Those hoop skirts!

Those corsets and laces and shoulder pads and harlequin colors and crowns!

Puff, bows and again and again: tartan pattern!

In fashion “everything comes again”?

It's correct.

But no one has put together all this criss-cross and motley with such virtuosity as Vivienne Westwood.

Love: Vivienne Westwood and her husband, Austrian designer Andreas Kronthaler.

© A-way!/Allphoto

Of course there were critics.

Constricting corsets?

misogynist!

The lady took it with British composure: “I never wanted to make women look like victims and the corset does exactly the opposite.

In addition, it is very good for posture.

It shows off your breasts.” You can show them.

How to stand up for what you are.

There is a lot of talk about that at the moment.

But Westwood did it.

As a matter of course he lived with the Austrian designer Andreas Kronthaler, who was 25 years his junior, married him and wrote design history together with him.

Now the great fashion artist Vivienne Westwood has died.

She is survived by two sons - photographer Ben Westwood and Joseph Corré, founder of (also gorgeous) lingerie company Agent Provocateur.

In a statement on Westwood's official Instagram account, they said: "Vivienne continued to do the things she loved, designing, working on her art, writing her book and changing the world for the better right up to the last moment... The world needs People like Vivienne, to change something for the better.” The spirit of the Vivienne Westwood year will never end.

Because their energy is immortal.

Source: merkur

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