The Bite Magazine - issue 16

bite designer profile A s one of the fashion design- ers responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashion to the mainstream, Vivienne Westwood has not lost any of her influence. Even at the age of 75, she looks remarkably well and vibrant. Her main thesis these days is on climate change rather than the fashion career that made her one of the most renowned fashion designers of our time and awarded her the title of Dame of the British Empire. Her anarchic idealism is as alive and kicking as it was when she and Malcolm McLaren made their rebellious actions known over four decades ago. These days, Westwood leaves all the designing of the main collec- tion to her husband Andreas Kronthaler while she concentrates on her activism. “I’m proud to be called an activist,” she told The Telegraph in an interview two years ago. “I have a lifetime of ideas about how to make the world a better place. I’m always worried. I wake up in the middle of the night. But it’s good because I sort things out. It’s been a build-up, having this public face and the opportunity to speak.” Along with McLaren, her then-lover and business partner, Westwood created the punk look for the Sex Pistols, the band that he formed and managed, with safety pins, ripped t-shirts and slogans. She said of McLaren, “I felt there were so many doors to open, and he had the key to all of them. Plus, he had a political attitude and I needed to align myself.” However, behind closed doors, their partnership was completely different to how it was por- trayed in the media.Westwood explained to The Telegraph that they had a love-hate relationship and McLaren was extremely cruel to her, making her cry every day, until now, she says; she can’t cry any more. “Malcolm was so bad to me. I would never have told any of these things when he was alive. He was very jealous of me. He would say things like,‘She’s just a seamstress’ and ‘Vivienne would not be a designer if she’d never met me.’” She went on to explain how they would fight every day. “He used to drive me mad. He used to be provoca- tive and selfish and spiteful. He would try and undermine your confidence and say something that would make you feel bad. All of the time.” Speaking to the paper about her biography book Vivienne Westwood written with Ian Kelly, she said: “I’d been avoiding doing a book for ages. Then another book came out about me, and I didn’t like it. Andreas said,‘You have to do your own’. And I said the last thing I want to do is write about myself. But when it came to it, I found it interesting to explain things that I had done, and to recall things when I was a child.” Surprisingly, growing up during the war influenced her design-wise. “I’m glad I was born in that period,” she told the paper. “I think its dreadful now – children are inundated with all this rubbish, like fuchsia-coloured plastic and pink bicycles for little girls. It’s awful. Compare that with a child growing up with nothing, but crawl- ing on the floor with little Delft tiles, you know those Dutch tiles where there’d be a windmill or a falcon - wonderful things to look at. I didn’t have anything around me. No art. And my mother would always read to us. That was important; it was how I could discover art.” Westwood initially started her career as a primary school teacher. Soon after meeting McLaren, the couple opened a shop called ‘Let It Rock’ in 1971 on Kings Road in London’s Chelsea which at the time sold Teddy Boy clothing. This changed to biker clothes, zips and leather which prompted the shop to be rebranded with a skull and crossbones as well as a name change to ‘Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die’. Fol- lowing this,Westwood and McLaren began designing t-shirts with provocative mes- sages that led to their prosecution under the obscenity laws.They then transformed the shop again and produced more hard- core images. By 1974, the shop had been