5 things we'll remember Vivienne Westwood for

«Vivienne did the things she loved until her last moment: she drew, worked on her art, wrote her book, and changed the world for the better. She led an extraordinary life. Her innovations and influence over the last 60 years have been immense and will continue to be so. Vivienne considered herself a Taoist», reads the Instagram post published yesterday to announce the British designer's death. It is difficult to find adjectives that do not trivialize her figure because the complex was also her work as a creative, intellectual, and environmentalist.

She wrote the things she cared about on T-shirts to generalize them graphically: from God Save the Queen! to FUCK! to Buy Less, her mottos will stay with us for a long time. Let us remember the decisive moments of his career and summarise them in five key points.

She had a store

When she opened his first shop, Let it Rock, at 430 King's Road in London in 1971, he was 30 years old. Shortly after, he renamed it Too fast to live too young to die, Sex, Seditionaries and finally with the current, World's End. This was due to her affiliation with the Sex Pistols and her relationship with their manager, Malcolm McLaren, following his split from her husband Derek Westwood. The shop evolved from a tiny space into a sacred temple of the punk movement: biker jackets, patriotic or irreverent slogans on T-shirts, necklaces and iconic accessories were all World's End needed to establish itself on the London and international scene and exemplify the designer's approach to fashion.

She was an activist

 

Vivienne did not just bring flags to the catwalk, but also fought back with posters and facts: Climate Revolution, which has been enriched with content again and again since 2012, is nothing but the sum of the experiences of an activism that did not stop at the slogan of a show and addressed politics, industry and the masses step by step. It is no coincidence that her brand was among the first to renounce fur and march together with Peta; likewise, she supports Greenpeace and marine conservation groups, her founder at the forefront, on the streets as well as in the water. Since 2010, she has worked with the International Trade Centre, a joint body UN, which works directly with artisans in Africa's poorest communities, providing them with regular wages and creating a virtuous circle to prevent deforestation and the recycling of polluting materials. In 2017, she launched the SWITCH to Green campaign, involving the British Fashion Council and the Mayor of London, to urge the fashion industry to switch to clean energy sources.

She was outrageously punk 

When WWD editor John Fairchild was confronted with the designer's creations, he described her as the “Alice in Wonderland of fashion”. She brought pirates, witches, artists and sex to the catwalk and talked about fashion in such a personal way that she «plundered the world and National Geographic by combining the ethnic with the historical». By going against the grain and appearing more contemporary than her peers, she was able to develop a style that only partially overlapped with punk culture. From rounded shoulders in the 1980s to haute couture in the 1990s to being fined for the «public display of indecent images» on the T-shirt Naked Cowboys, which shows two men naked from the waist down - a 1975 nude.

Awards and recognition from the royal family

The 1990s were particularly significant for Vivienne Westwood because of the awards she received for her career: in 1991 she was named British Designer of the Year. Just two years later, she was personally made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in recognition of her commitment to art and fashion in Britain. Then in 2005 she was honored with the title of Officer of the British Empire and in 2006 she was awarded the title of Dame.

She designed Carrie Bradshaw's wedding dress

It is in 1993 that Vivienne Westwood decides to combine sky-high heels with mini-kilts and wear bras over dresses. in 1994, a change of scene takes place: Café Society wants voluminous dresses with train, strapless, in taffeta or silk. The inspiration comes from the eighteenth century and is the same that we find in the wedding dress Vivienne designs especially for the star of the film Sex & The City in 2008. The scenic and ostentatious dress worn by Carrie Bradshaw became so famous that the luxury shopping giant Net-a-porter offered a shorter version that sold out within hours.