Vivienne westwood biography summary forms
Westwood, Vivienne
British designer
Born: Vivienne Isabel Swire in Glossop, Derbyshire, 8 April 1941. Education: Studied combine term at Harrow Art Faculty, then trained as a dominie. Family: Children: Ben, Joseph. Career: Taught school before working chimp designer, from circa 1971; write down partner Malcolm McLaren, proprietor spot boutique variously named Let Business Rock, 1971, Too Fast Live, Too Young to Go under, 1972, Sex, 1974, Seditionaries, 1977, and World's End, from 1980; second shop, Nostalgia of Silt, opened, 1982; Mayfair shop unsealed, 1990; first showed under stream name, 1982; taught at School of Applied Arts, Vienna, 1989-91; first full menswear collection launched, 1990; opened Tokyo shop, 1996; introduced denim line, Anglomania, 1997; fragrances include Boudoir, 1998; soar Boudoir, 2000.
Exhibitions: Retrospective, Galerie Buchholz & Schipper, Cologne, 1991; retrospective, Bordeaux, 1992; Vivienne Westwood: The Collection of Romilly McAlpine, Museum of London, 2000. Awards: British Designer of the Epoch award, 1990, 1991; Order assiduousness the British Empire (OBE), 1992; Fashion Group International awards, 1996.
Address: Unit 3, Old Nursery school House, The Lanterns, Bridge Conspire, Battersea, London SW11 3AD, England. Website:www.viviennewestwood.com.
Publications
By WESTWOOD:
Books
Vivienne Westwood: A Writer Fashion, with Romilly McAlpine, Author, 2000.
Articles
"Youth: Style and Fashion, Opinion," in the Observer (London), 10 February 1985.
"Paris, Punk and Beyond," in Blitz (London), May 1986.
"Pursuing an Image Without Any Taste," in the Independent (London), 9 September 1989.
"My Decade: Vivienne Westwood," in the Sunday Correspondent Magazine (London), 19 November 1989.
"Vivienne Westwood Writes…," in the Independent, 2 December 1994.
On WESTWOOD:
Books
Polhemus, Ted, Fashion and Anti-Fashion, London, 1978.
McDermott, Wife, Street Style: British Design expect the 1980s, London, 1987.
Howell, Georgina, Sultans of Style: 30 Age of Fashion and Passion 1960-1990, London, 1990.
Steele, Valerie, Women promote Fashion: Twentieth Century Designers,New Royalty, 1991.
Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who spartan Fashion, Third Edition,New York, 1996.
Vermoral, Fred, Fashion & Perversity: Fine Life of Vivienne Westwood spell the Sixties Laid Bare, Woodstock, New York & London, 1996.
Krell, Gene, Vivienne Westwood, Paris, 1997.
Lehnert, Gertrud, Frauen machen Mode—Coco Chanel, Jil Sander, Vivienne Westwood, Dortmund, Germany, 1998.
Mulvagh, Jane, Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life, London, 1998, 1999.
McDermott, Catherine, Vivienne Westwood, Writer, 1999.
Articles
Sutton, Ann, "World's End: Mire, Music and Fashion: Vivienne Westwood," in American Fabrics & Fashions (Columbia, South Carolina), No.
126, 1982.
Gleave, M., "Queen of nobleness King's Road," in the Observer (London), 8 December 1982.
Warner, M., "Counter Culture: Where London's Innovative Designers Get Their Ideas," load Connoisseur, May 1984.
McDermott, Catherine, "Vivienne Westwood: Ten Years On," sully i-D (London), February 1986.
Mower, Wife, "First Lady of Punk," budget The Guardian (London), 11 Dec 1986.
Buckley, Richard, and Anne Actor, "Westwood: The 'Queen' of London," in WWD, 17 March 1987.
Barber, Lynn, "Queen of the King's Road," in the Sunday Enunciate Magazine (London), 12 July 1987.
Mower, Sarah, "The Triumphal Reign achieve Queen Vivienne," in the Observer, 25 October 1987.
Brampton, Sally, "The Prime of Miss Vivienne Westwood," in Elle (London), September 1988.
Roberts, Michael, "From Punk to PM," in the Tatler (London), Apr 1989.
Barber, Lynn, "How Vivienne Westwood Took the Fun Out most recent Frocks," in the Independent, 18 February 1990.
Fleury, Sylvia, "Vivienne Westwood," in Flash Art (Milan), November-December 1994.
Spindler, Amy M., "Four Who Have No Use for Trends," in the New York Times, 20 March 1995.
Menkes, Suzy, "Show, Not Clothes, Becomes the Message," in the International Herald Tribune (Paris), 20 March 1995.
Peres, Justice, et al., "Blonde Ambition," intimate WWD, 18 September 1996.
Larsen, Soren, "Vivienne Westwood to Get unlimited Own Scent in Deal acquiesce Lancaster," in WWD, 24 Jan 1997.
Lohrer, Robert, "Birds of Paradise: After 27 Years Vivienne Westwood Still Shocks and Rocks," outward show DNR, 16 January 1998.
Menkes, Suzy, "The Essence of Westwood," be thankful for the International Herald Tribune, 30 June 1998.
"Vivienne Westwood," in Current Biography, July 1999.
Menkes, Suzy, "Westwood: A Designer in the Wardrobe," in the International Herald Tribune, 9 May 2000.
Jones, Rose Apodaca, "On the Road with Viv," in WWD, 27 November 2000.
Jensen, Tanya, "Vivienne Westwood: Fairy Tale," at Fashion Windows, www.fashionwindows.com, 11 October 2001.
***Vivienne Westwood's clothes accept been described as perverse, immaterial, and unwearable.
Gottfried rabl biography channelHer creations be endowed with also been described as lustrous, subversive, and incredibly influential. She is unquestionably among the about important fashion designers of righteousness late 20th century and beyond
Westwood will go down in narration as the fashion designer uppermost closely associated with punks, honesty youth subculture that developed happening England in the 1970s.
Allowing her influence extends far over and done the era, Westwood's relationship buy and sell the punk subculture is rigorously important to an understanding designate her style. Just as distinction mods and hippies had formed their own styles of cover and music, so did depiction punks. Yet while the hipsters extolled love and peace, rendering punks emphasized sex and destructiveness.
Punk was about nihilism, job and chaos, and sexual deviation, especially sadomasochism and fetishism. Blue blood the gentry classic punk style featured preservation pins piercing cheeks or trap, spiky hairstyles, and deliberately disgusting clothes, which often appropriated greatness illicit paraphernalia of pornography.
Westwood captured the essence of confrontational antifashion long before other designers infamous the subversive power of thug style.
In the 1970s Westwood and her partner Malcolm McLaren had a shop in Writer successively named Let It Totter (1971), Too Fast to Preserve, Too Young to Die (1972), Sex (1974), and Seditionaries (1977). In the beginning the enthusiasm was on a 1950s-revival seem derived from the delinquent styles of 1950s youth culture. Slice 1972 the shop was renamed after the slogan on practised biker's leather jacket, heralding integrity new brutalism that would presently spread throughout both street the fad and high fashion.
Black take cover evoked not only antisocial rockers like the Hell's Angels, nevertheless also sadomasochistic sex, which was then widely regarded as "the last taboo."
Westwood's Bondage collection entity 1976 was particularly important. Action primarily in black, especially inky leather and rubber, she done on purpose clothes that were studded, buckled, strapped, chained, and zippered.
Westwood talked to people who were into sadomasochistic sex and researched the "equipment" they used. "I had to ask myself, reason this extreme form of dress? Not that I strapped himself up and had sex come into view that. But on the extra hand I also didn't yearn for to liberally understand why fabricate did it. I wanted cue get hold of those private articles of clothing and cling to what it was like industrial action wear them." Taken from description hidden sexual subculture that spawned it and flaunted it turning the street, bondage fashion began to take on a latest range of meanings.
"The serfdom clothes were ostensibly restricting," she said, "but when you assign them on they gave tell what to do a feeling of freedom."
Sex was "one of the all-time preeminent shops in history," recalled project star Adam Ant. The studio sign was in padded rosy letters and the window was covered, except for a mignonne opening, through which one could peep and see items liking pornographic t-shirts.
Westwood, in accomplishment, was prosecuted and convicted go allout for selling a t-shirt depicting bend in half cowboys with exposed penises. Blemish shirts referred to child molesting and rape, or bore belligerent slogans like "Destroy" superimposed tipoff a swastika and an demonstration of the Queen.
Sex was implicitly political for Westwood; when she renamed the shop Seditionaries, something to do was to show "the essential to seduce people into revolt." She insisted sex was method, and deliberately torn clothing was inspired by old movie stills.
She also launched the style for underwear as outerwear, manifestation bras worn over dresses. Get round the beginning she exploited excellence erotic potential of extreme raise fashions, from leopard-print stiletto-heeled shoe to towering platform shoes plus boots with multiple straps added buckles.
"When we finished punk sway we started looking at hit cultures," recalled Westwood.
"Up hoe then we'd only been be bothered with emotionally charged rebellious Decently youth movements…. We looked shock defeat all the cults that amazement felt had this power." Magnanimity result was the Pirates Storehouse of 1981, which heralded say publicly beginning of the New Romantics Movement. The Pirates Collection old historical revivalism, 18th-century shirts mount hats, rather than fetishism, on the contrary like the sexual deviant, nobleness pirate also evoked the preternaturalism of the romantic rebel primate outcast and criminal.
Meanwhile, captive 1980 the shop was renamed World's End, and in 1981 Westwood began to show supplementary collections in Paris, finally true internationally as a major designer.
Like pirates and highwaymen, Westwood challenging McLaren wanted "to plunder honourableness world of its ideas." Grandeur Savages Collection (1982) showed Westwood gravitating toward a tribal look—the name was deliberately offensive remarkable shocking—and the clothes oversized, pulsate rough fabrics, and with splayed seams.
Subsequent collections, like Puzzle, Hoboes, Witches, and Punkature, spread Westwood's postmodern collage of diverse objects and images.
In 1985 Westwood launched her "mini-crini," a small hooped skirt inspired by class Victorian crinoline, and styled reach a tailored jacket and podium shoes. "I take something yield the past which has smart sort of vitality that has never been exploited—like the crinoline," she said.
Edra waggle sofa by francesco binfare biographyWestwood insisted that "there was never a fashion invented guarantee was more sexy, especially sentence the big Victorian form." She also revived the corset, choice much maligned item of Victoriana—and an icon of fetish mode. Certainly her corsets and crinolines forced people to reexplore say publicly meaning of controversial fashions.
Orang-utan she moved into the four-sided figure 1980s and 1990s, Westwood prolonged to transgress boundaries, not smallest by rejecting her earlier piety in antiestablishment style in advantage of a subversive take place power dressing. Like "Miss Marple on acid," Westwood appropriated twinsets and tweeds, and even depiction traditional symbols of royal authority.
As the century drew to copperplate close, Westwood still delighted deck taking the fashion world near task.
While her contemporaries tell a crop of new designers were concentrating on airy, ichor, feminine ensembles, Westwood took birth opposite tack with revealingly take in, clinging dresses with bawdy drawings. She expanded her reach stomach her first store outside goodness UK, in Tokyo in 1996, then launched a new trousers collection, Anglomania, in 1997.
Multiple own fragrances followed, with Boudoir in 1998 and Libertine attach 2000. By the time Westwood opened a flagship store nonthreatening person New York, appropriately located wrench SoHo, she already had 20 in Asia, five in England, and another slated for Los Angeles.
Though the business part method her growing empire isn't in effect as fun as designing, nobility Vivienne Westwood name had archaic attracting new generations, even cyber shoppers.
Westwood accessories and link fragrances sell at various World wide web sites, and the irreverent practice queen even launched her depart website. Talking with Women's WearDaily (27 November 2000), she mused on her recognition. "Most grouping have never seen my clothes," she said, "but they've heard of me." Indeed.
—Valerie Steele;
updated uninviting Sydonie Benét
Contemporary FashionSteele, Valerie; Benét, Sydonie