Vivienne Westwood, the queen of punk, the rebel stylist who at 81 still participated in strikes and protests making her scathing voice heard by politicians and powerful, died today in London.
She had been ill for some time.
She lived her last hours talking about the planet and what needs to be done to save it.
Even if your latest arrows hit different targets: "Julian Assange - you had declared - is a hero and was treated atrociously by the British government".
Or again: "Capitalism is a crime. It is the main cause of war, climate change and corruption".
Hers was a lone voice, always.
She was rebellious by nature.
She would have turned 82 on April 8.
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 baskets.
Vivienne arrived in London at 17 but she dropped out of university because she found it boring.
At twenty-one she married Derek Westwood and had a son.
She then 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 her Malcolm 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 "
The Victoria and Albert Museum dedicated the largest exhibition of a living fashion designer to her.
While she moved from London to Paris where she opened an atelier.
She was divided between Great Britain, France and Vienna where she held a professorship.
It was in Vienna that she met her future husband, Andreas Kronthaler, her student at her fashion school, 25 years her junior.
They married shortly after, during a lunch break in London.
He became her assistant to whom she left the creative direction in 2016. But not to retire.
"Enough talking about clothes" she warned, addressing anyone who approached her to talk about fashion.
She was all caught up in social problems.
So much so that at the show of the pret-a'-porter spring/summer collection designed by her husband and presented in Paris in October, she, an irreducible 81-year-old rebel,
not surprisingly, the mother of punk, she remained in London to join a social protest.
"I will continue with Vivienne in my heart - her husband said tonight -. We worked until the end and she gave me a lot of things to go on with. Thank you darling".
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 Foundation's goal is to raise awareness and create tangible change by working with NGOs, based on four pillars: climate change, stop war, defend human rights and protest against capitalism.
The Vivienne Foundation exists to create a better world and implement Vivienne's plans.
Her last 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.
She becomes a freedom fighter'".