Vivienne, SEX and What She's Given Us

Vivienne Westwood’s  hair is as much on fire as her mind. She’s the essence of the 70s punk sex revolution, and her designs have inspired the fashion world and, more recently, the coffee table book publisher Taschen.

His Soho bookstore consumed my lunch breaks when I worked at the neighboring office of Nylon two summers back. It’s safe to say I’m obsessed, but with him, not only Westwood. But as fashion/art culture is a circle, we must appreciate those who inspire the inspirers, and respect those ballsy enough to speak their minds. Thus I come to Viv and sharing her dirtily evocative designs with you.

It’s first important to divide the genre of punk. You can’t compare the Sex Pistols  to the Ramones  just like you can’t compare Brit punk fashion to American. It’s just different, and Vivienne’s role in the scene’s style of clashing colors and rioting patterns only made the music seem louder and the European fashion world scream along. After all, she was the one who designed for Sex Pistol Malcolm Mclaren.

She called her designs innovative, but they were more often just crazy. When she met Mclaren, Westwood had just gone through her first divorce and was hot to pursue the independence the punk scene thrived on. Making a scene was the scene, and Vivienne had the courage to do just that. She drew early inspiration from fetishists and sex workers, and voiced her feelings on democracy and liberation through her clothes. Her designs became her megaphone and declared her an international activist.

Once the Pistols went platinum, the word got out and the decade turned. Vivienne decided it was time for another fashion revolution. A young girl on the tube Vivienne described as “cool” helped to turn the page for her boutique, called “SEX,” from raw punk to reworked tweed and ballet buns. After all, her Westminster Harrow School of Art education had to give her a little respect for prior revolutionists. This new collection would draw from 16th and 17th century paintings and pull from their own royal rock stars — like my character crush Marie Antoinette. Vivienne titled the phase “The Pagan Years,”  and the collection was bursting with fur and corsets, now owned by private collectors and in the halls of The Victoria and Albert Museum, one of my favorite London institutions.

Over the decades, Vivienne’s fearless designs have made her famous as someone who designs clothes meant to be stared at. She has surely made a dent in society and served as an inspiration to many — especially the late Alexander McQueen, as we saw the many “pagan-esque” designs in his own gothic collections. Her current designs have moved from the pieces displayed in Victoria and Albert, to what you’d consider more worthy of Tate Modern. They all seem to contain rich art-deco patterns of the current century. But what has always remained the same, and something I believe will stay constant despite the decade, is her sheer adamancy to speak her mind and remind you to do the same.