Vivienne Westwood, the designer who defined the look of punk by using rock iconography, royalty, art and religion as recurring motifs in collections that gave a rebellious edge to British style, and who went on to launch a long career in haute couture, died on Thursday in the Clapham area of South London. She turned 81.
Her death was announced by her company, Vivienne Westwood, who did not specify the cause.
Ms Westwood was just 30 when she and her boyfriend, Malcolm McLaren – who would later run the Sex Pistols as a music impresario – opened a shop called Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road in London. The company, which had a pink vinyl signboard on the front, was unconventional, selling fetish wear and fashion inspired by the Teddy Boy look of the 1950s.
Shaping the look of the era, Ms. Westwood became known as the godmother of punk. After her collaboration with Mr. McClaren ended, she began designing collections under her own name and quickly built an international reputation. She went on to open more stores in London and around the world; her provocative creations appeared on supermodels and celebrities and influenced mainstream fashion. The corsets, platform shoes and mini crinis (a combination of Victorian crinoline and mini skirt) became her hallmarks.
“People really associate her with punk and that whole aesthetic, that’s right and how she made her name, but she’s so much more than that,” Véronique Hyland, the author of “Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion From the New Look to Millennial Pink (2022), said in an interview for this obituary. “She was influenced by art history, old master paintings. She is very focused on the English tradition of tailoring.”
In a memoir published in 2014 and titled simply “Vivienne Westwood”, Ms. Westwood wrote that people “still seem surprised that you could have been in punk and then also couture, but it’s all connected.”
“It’s not about fashion, you see,” she wrote. “For me it’s about the story. It’s about ideas.”
The King’s Road store always offered a glimpse into the owners’ obsessions with class, fashion and decency. As the years passed, the name often changed – it was also known as Let It Rock; Too fast to live, too young to die; Sex; Seditionaries; and World End. The wares also changed frequently.
Ms. Westwood created the clothes, which included shirts with cut-out pictures of pin-up girls or studded underwear made from T-shirts with slogans like “destroy” or “Be reasonable, demand the impossible.”
“I didn’t see myself as a fashion designer, but as someone who wanted to confront the rotten status quo by the way I dressed and dressed others,” said Ms Westwood in her memoir, which she co-wrote with Ian Kelly .
Chrissie Hynde, who would later become the lead singer of the Pretenders, was an assistant at the store. She was quoted in Mrs. Westwood’s memoir, “I don’t think punk would have happened without Vivienne and Malcolm.”
“Something would have happened,” she continued, “and it could have been called punk, but it wouldn’t have looked the way it did, even in America. And appearance was important.”
A full obituary follows.