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Fashion Rebels: Political haute-couture by Vivienne Westwood

“Buy less. Choose well. Make it last.” – Vivienne Westwood

“I don’t have people telling me what to do,” said one of the most favourite English designers, Vivienne Westwood, in an interview on her official Facebook page last week. And no wonder, with any other approach it would be quite difficult to become a ‘mother’ of modern punk and new wave fashions.

She was noticed when she was making pieces for SEX, the boutique on King Road of the late manager of Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren. In those days her works were inspired by bikers, fetishists and prostitutes. Once Vivienne said that she felt herself messianic about punk, seeing if one could put a spoke in the system in some way. Her pieces were featured by the elements of BDSM fashion, included bike and lavatory chains, spiked dog collars as bijouterie mixed with badges, armbands, etc., and images were completed by extreme make-up and hair. Among interesting details were also the traditional elements of Scottish design, like tartan textile or using and reinterpreting the historical 17th and 18th-century cloth-cutting principles.

One of the most scandalous creations of Vivienne Westwood (also sold in SEX) was the 1977 provocative shirt, which contained the word “Destroy”, a red Nazi swastika, an inverted image of Christ on the cross and Sex Pistols lyrics. Westwood said it was about standing up to horrific dictators around the world who were torturing people, such as Chile’s Augusto Pinochet. „Fashion could be more than about just clothes, they could be about protest too,” she said later.

Clothes are among her most powerful weapons to express not only protest, but support too. In 2011, Vivienne organized the Ethical Fashion Africa campaign in Kenya, aiming to empower female workers. She designed her „Handmade with love” collection of bags, which were made by women in the capital city under ethical labour conditions. Since 2013, she has also been cooperating with craftsmen from Burkina Faso, who produce hand-woven materials for her women’s wear collections. “[Work] gives people control over their lives. Charity doesn’t give them control, it’s the opposite, makes them dependent,” she said in a Kenyan interview.

Her modern muse is a girl, “who has always been a reader, who knows the names of all the trees, who is going to museums all the time, who is an art lover and who really thinks culture is very-very important.”

The designer herself likes museums a lot and through all her career has been inspired by the 18th century and the Wallace Collection in particular, which she says “demonstrates what a high point of culture and art it is.” In her statement ahead of the Red Label Autumn-Winter 2015-16 show, Westwood said that the collection was for such a girl of culture and she emphasised the lack of true culture in modern society that is “controlled by the one percent of the world population who are in power. They preach consumption, and they preach war, and they’re taking us into disaster. We are in incredible danger.”

Afterwards she called on the audience to vote green. She has even cut off her hair to highlight the dangers of climate change, and since early 2015 she has been a follower of the Green Party of England and Wales. According to media, the designer donated 300,000 pounds to support the party’s election campaign.

Westwood is criticised a lot for using her high-end brand to promote her political views. On the other hand, if she is an exceptional designer with a huge impact on what people are wearing, why shouldn’t she use it? Even in cinematography, in the 2008 film adaptation of the television series Sex and the City, her gift of a wedding dress to the main heroine, Carrie Bradshaw, became the movie’s most iconic feature. Her famous customers, including Nigella Lawson, say that Westwood’s clothes accommodate curvy female forms more comfortably than those made by various male designers.

For now, Vivienne’s garments are couture and huge business, maybe also due to the rise of Asian markets. She is one of the top ten international brands in Japan; in China she is the “Dowager Empress of the West”. Criticised for her support of anti-consumerism because these two terms contradict each other, she says, „I don’t feel comfortable defending my clothes. But if you’ve got the money to afford them, then buy something from me. Just don’t buy too much.”

So, “Buy less. Choose well. Make it last,” as the designer suggests.