Vivienne Westwood

“The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas. They are the only subversion.”-VW

From http://www.style.com/beauty/icon/101008ICON/:

“Kate Winslet has hotly denied recent rumors that she'll play Vivienne Westwood in an upcoming biopic. To which we say, are you kidding? What actress would turn down the opportunity to play one of fashion's most intriguing characters? Just think of the costume changes…

Yes, there'd be the dreary schoolteacher garb to start, but then came Westwood's peroxide provocateur phase, in which she played partner-in-crime to Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and the model for ripped-and-safety-pinned T-shirt-wearing punks everywhere. In the eighties, the designer was her own best advertisement for the mini crinis and reconstructed eighteenth-century garb she put on the Paris runway. Cut to 1993, when Naomi Campbell took her infamous catwalk spill in Westwood's ten-inch platforms; we'd like to see Winslet give those a try. Fast-forward to today—when fashion's great crusader isn't sporting tiny horns in her dyed orange locks, she's wearing a headband that reads "branded" and proselytizing an anti-consumerist message that must give her business managers some sleepless nights. Come on, Kate, reconsider.”

Vivienne Westwood has always been her own best advertisement for her fashions. Yet she has always held an anti-establishment, anti-consumerism message. Westwood is completely against everything that Fordism represents: rational and standardized approaches to human beings and time. How can one of fashion’s most respected, most unconventional characters be anti-consumerism? Her career rests on consumerism. How can she be against branding? She is a brand, even more so than the brand that she has created. These paradoxes are quite characteristic of Vivienne Westwood’s often puzzling character and dogmas- anything against the grain, anything nonsensical, anything against conformity, and anything against consumerism (no matter what the costs, even if the costs are a raging business based on elite consumerism). What a fascinating character.

Britain experienced a cultural revolution in the 1970s with the birth of the punk subculture. Catherine McDermott says, “Westwood and McLaren saw themselves as the natural inheritors of Dada and Surrealist antics and one of the weapons they used to attack the establishment was the subcultural world of sexual deviancy and pornography. The clothes the pair designed carried with them the spirit of play with the signs of the times- a spirit that was vital and alive. The people who wore their clothes reflected their manipulation of urban culture and the libidinous world of London night life. Westwood’s designs acted as a trigger for the consumer, rendering them participants of the counter culture” (McDermott 13, emphasis mine).

Thus, from the get go, Westwood’s clothes were powerful symbols of rebellion, and were barely read in terms of “clothes.” Throughout the course of her career (especially from the late 70s to the early 80s), Westwood paradoxically brought punk, which was founded on an underground mentality of anarchy, anti-authority, and anti-conformity, to the mainstream. What does it mean to bring something that is rooted in anti-establishment beliefs to the mainstream? It has certainly changed the original meaning and significance of punk. Westwood became disenchanted: “I got tired of looking at clothes from this point of view of rebellion- I found it exhausting, and after a while I wasn’t sure if I was right. I’m sure that if there is such a thing as the ‘Anti-Establishment’- it feeds the Establishment” (Wilcox 15). Claire Wilcox goes on: “Westwood, now in her early 40s, turned her attention to subverting the Establishment from within” (Wilcox 15).

It seems to me that Vivienne Westwood has succeeded in sending an anti-consumerism message via a consumer based business because of the sign value, as defined by Baudrillard, attributed to her fashions. People do not necessarily buy Westwood for aesthetic purposes, but because of the radical messages the label sends. It also seems as though her seniority has tamed the reputation of her fashions. For instance, the recent Sex and the City film kissed Westwood’s feet, many times. Carrie’s wedding dress was Westwood, and Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall donned Westwood to many of the international premieres. But Westwood's unpredictability remains. She said of the film: "I thought Sex and the City was supposed to be about cutting-edge fashion and there was nothing remotely memorable or interesting about what I saw. I went to the premiere and left after 10 minutes." Westwood’s unconventionality will never die. And although her fashions have become more conventional, aesthetically speaking, the sign value of her looks as anti-establishment, anti-consumerism, and anti-conformity are stronger than ever.

"Fashion was a baby I picked up and never put down," said Westwood, whose formal training consisted of a single term at Harrow Art College.

"The only reason I'm in fashion is to destroy the word 'conformity,' " the designer once said. "Nothing's interesting to me unless it's got that element."

“Fashion is all about playing with the polarities of masculine and feminine with ideas about dress and undress. Fashion is eventually about being naked.”

Sources:

Wilcox, Claire. Vivienne Westwood. London: V&A Publications, 2004.

McDermott, Catherine. Vivienne Westwood. London: Carlton Books Limited, 1999.

Mulvagh, Jane. Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.