Dame Vivienne Westwood, the pioneering British fashion designer who played a key role in the punk movement, has died in London aged 81.
Westwood died “peacefully, surrounded by her family” in Clapham, south London, on Thursday, her representatives said in a statement.
She had continued to do the things she loved, including designing, working on her book and making art, “right up until the last moment,” they added.
A look back at the life and legacy of Dame Vivienne Westwood – video obituary
Her husband and creative partner, Andreas Kronthaler, said: “I’ll continue with Vivienne at heart. We’ve been working until the end and she’s given me a lot to go on. Thank you sweetie.”
Born in the Derbyshire village of Tintwistle in 1941, Westwood’s family moved to London in 1957, where she attended art school for a term. A self-taught designer with no formal fashion training, Westwood learned to make clothes as a teenager by following patterns and taking apart second-hand clothes she found at markets to understand cut and construction.
She met bandleader Malcolm McLaren in the 1960s while working as a primary school teacher after separating from her first husband, Derek Westwood. The pair opened a small shop on Kings Road in Chelsea in 1971 which became a haven for many of the bands he kitted out, including the Sex Pistols, who were managed by McLaren.
Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren with Vivienne Westwood in 1977. Picture: Mirrorpix/Getty Images
His provocative and sometimes controversial designs came to define the punk aesthetic, and Westwood would become one of Britain’s most famous fashion designers, combining historical references, classic tailoring and romantic flourishes with harder and sometimes overt messages politicians
Westwood and McLaren’s store changed its name and focus several times, including rebranding as Sex, which saw the pair fined in 1975 for “indecent exposure” there, as well as Worlds End and Seditionaries.
Westwood’s first catwalk, in 1981, for her Pirates collection, was an important step in the punk rebel becoming one of the most famous stars in the fashion world. But she still found ways to surprise: her Statue of Liberty corset in 1987 is considered to have started the “underwear as outerwear” trend.
Although Westwood’s design empire grew into a multi-million pound business, the designer never lost her activist streak. In 1989 she posed for the cover of Tatler magazine dressed as Margaret Thatcher, above a headline that read: “This woman was once a punk”. She later told Dazed Digital that “the dress she was wearing had been commissioned by Margaret Thatcher from Aquascutum, but she had then cancelled.”
Vivienne Westwood, after receiving her OBE in 1992. Picture: Martin Keene/PA Archive/Press Association Images
From his early punk days, Westwood remixed and inverted images taken from the British monarchy. When she was awarded an OBE in 1992, the designer accepted the honor from Queen Elizabeth II while wearing a demure gray skirt suit. Outside Buckingham Palace, she gave a twirl to waiting photographers, revealing to the world that she had been wearing no panties.
Westwood was invited in 2006 to receive the even more auspicious designation of Dame Commander of the British Empire.
In the mid-2000s, Westwood turned his political focus to the climate crisis. In 2007 he published a manifesto entitled Resistència activa a la propaganda, in which he wrote: “We have a choice: to be more cultured and, therefore, more human, or by not choosing, to be the destructive and self-destructive animal, the victim of our own intelligence (to be or not to be).
As an anti-consumerist, Westwood gleefully undermined his own business interests. In 2010, he told AAP: “I just tell people to stop buying clothes. Why not protect this gift of life while we have it? I don’t take the attitude that destruction is inevitable. Some of us would like to stop -it and help people survive.”
In 2015, he drove a tank to then-Prime Minister David Cameron’s house in Oxfordshire, in a protest against fracking. As a vegetarian, Westwood lobbied the British government to ban the retail sale of fur along with other prominent designers, including Stella McCartney.
She was also an outspoken supporter of Julian Assange. In 2020, he was suspended in a birdcage to protest the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder from the UK. In 2022, he designed the suit and dress worn by Assange and his wife, Stella Moris, at their wedding.
Until the end, Westwood wrote regularly about climate and social justice issues on his website No Man’s Land. Last month he issued a statement of support for climate protesters who threw soup on Van Gogh’s sunflowers, writing: “Young people are desperate. They’re wearing a T-shirt that says: Just Stop Oil. They’re doing something.”
Tributes poured in for the designer on Thursday night. “Vivienne is gone and the world is a less interesting place. Love you Viv,” tweeted Chrissie Hynde, the Pretenders’ frontwoman and a former worker at the couple’s shop.
Model Karen Elson, who often collaborated with the designer, wrote on Instagram: “She broke the notions of femininity, sex and was one of the first to demand that fashion do better in terms of climate and, without without a doubt, she was one of the most original people I’ve ever met. Fashion, art, culture will mourn this loss of a gigantic woman who shaped how we dress and how we dress.”
Fashion commentator Derek Blasberg wrote that while textbooks may remember Westwood for “introducing the London counterculture scene to high fashion… I think she’d like to be remembered more for her advocacy, specifically [concerning] global warming… His life was aggressive, relentless and fabulous. A total original.”
Westwood is survived by Kronthaler, who is her second husband, and her two sons, fashion photographer Ben Westwood, her son with Derek Westwood and her son with McLaren, Joe Corré, who co-founded the underwear company Agent Provocateur