Britain: Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood has died

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The news of her death was announced on her official Twitter account. Vivienne Westwood associated her name with the punk scene in the 1970s and became one of the brightest stars in British fashion.

British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood has passed away at the age of 81, as announced by her representative on her official Twitter account.

“Vivian Westwood died today, peacefully and surrounded by her family in Clapham, south London. The world needs people like Vivian for a change for the better,” the post reads.

She associated her name with the punk scene in the 1970s and became one of the brightest stars in British fashion. Through her collections she made sure to send political messages (such as taking action on climate change or her support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange).

Parodying Margaret Thatcher, she posed for the cover of Tatler magazine in 1989, driving a white tank near the country home of later British Prime Minister David Cameron in protest of the controversial method of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract hydrocarbons.

In 1992, Queen Elizabeth II awarded her the Order of the British Empire. Vivienne Westwood did not miss the opportunity to provoke, after revealing to the camera that she was not wearing underwear.

“The only reason I’m in fashion is to destroy the word ‘obedience,'” the rebellious designer said in her 2014 biography. “Nothing seems interesting to me if it doesn’t have that element,” she added. .

She was responsible for the clothing choices of the members of the band Sex Pistols, who defined the punk rock scene in London in the 1970s. Her partner Malcolm McLaren was the manager of the popular band.

“There was no punk before me and Malcolm,” Westwood claimed in her biography.

Vivian Isabelle Swire was born on April 8, 1941 in Glossop, England. From the late 1960s she lived for many years in a small flat in south London, while using a bicycle to commute.

She learned silversmithing and jewelry making before changing majors and becoming a primary school teacher.

From her first marriage, with Derek Westwood, she had a son. Benjamin Westwood was born in 1963 and the couple divorced three years later.

Vivienne Westwood was selling jewelery in London when she met student Malcolm McLaren, who became her companion in both personal and professional life. They had a son, Joe Core, who later co-founded the underwear brand Agent Provocateur. The couple divorced in the early 1980s and Westwood slowly began to forge her own path in the fashion world.

She met her second husband, Andreas Krodaler, in Vienna, and they married in 1993.

Westwood has used her fame to champion issues such as nuclear disarmament and protest anti-terror laws and policies that hurt the poor. “I’ve always had a political agenda,” he told fashion magazine L’Officiel in 2018.

RES-EMP

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