Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life

DEDICATION

To Anthony

EPIGRAPH

‘The child sees everything in a state of newness; he is always drunk. Nothing more resembles inspiration than the delight with which a child absorbs form and colour … but genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered at will – a childhood now equipped with self-expression, with manhood’s capabilities and powers of analysis which enable it to order the mass of raw material which it has involuntarily accumulated.

Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

On the Tree of Knowledge

I have carved 'amour'

The answer's not in looks, but books

If you want Glamour.

Vivienne Westwood, lyrics for ‘Choice’, 1987

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Preface to the 2004 edition

Preface to the original edition

PART ONE: THE AMATEUR DRESSMAKER

1 The Girl from the Snake Pass

2 Meeting Malcolm

3 Prankster Retailing

4 Cartwheeling to Casualty

PART TWO: THE GROUND-BREAKING DESIGNER

5 World’s End

6 Without Italy, I Wouldn’t Exist’

7 Rule Britannia!

PART THREE: THE CELEBRATED OUTSIDER

8 Wear Your Brain on Your Sleeve

9 The Wife Of Bath

10 Non-Stop Distractions

Conclusion

Appendix A

Appendix B

Reference Notes

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

PREFACE TO THE 2004 EDITION

When I concluded the first edition of this book in March 1998 I felt that it was ‘too soon to establish Vivienne Westwood’s place in fashion history’. I am happy to see that the Victoria and Albert Museum in London now believes that her work deserves a major retrospective. The curators have supplemented their archives with the purchase of three hundred early Westwood items from Michael and the late Gerlinde Costiff’s collection. They were two of Vivienne’s most avid early customers, and wore the clothes everywhere: to work, to the carnival in Brazil every year; ‘Even in places like the Sudan or Mali or Burkino Faso, people would point and say, “World’s End!” People always recognised Vivienne’s things,’ Michael Costiff recalls.

The Costiff collection has been acquired by the V&A for £100,000, £42,500 of which was raised by a grant from the National Art Collections Fund. On 1 April 2004 (a date that will amuse Vivienne) it will open a major retrospective of Vivienne’s life’s work. It is pleasing to see her work properly curated and exhibited, especially by a museum whose knowledgeable and brave Director of Textiles and Costume in the seventies and eighties, Valerie Mendes, had the foresight to invest the department’s meagre funds in the ‘Pirates’ collection. Mendes’ early commitment to Westwood, and this biography, have contributed to the latter’s recognition as an important, original and above all worldwide influence on modern fashion.

Coincidentally, as the cycle of fashion turns Vivienne’s oeuvre sits happily with the times once again. In a reaction to the last five years of ubiquitous sportswear, relieved only by skimpy slip dresses, her fashion vocabulary has resonance now. Whether it’s the playful layers of the ‘Buffalo’ look from her early years or the cut, fit, and dress-up idiom of her later collections, her clothes have found a new generation of fans. The Vivienne Westwood revival went mainstream three years ago when Kate Moss turned up at a party wearing original ‘Pirate’ boots. Leading auction houses and specialist stores, such as Rellick in West London, have enjoyed a busy trade in her vintage clothes and accessories. Indeed, one whole sale at Sotheby’s was devoted to the Vivienne Westwood collection of Lady Romilly McAlpine. Vivienne Westwood Ltd has launched the Anglomania label to exploit her back catalogue. The company also keeps in its archives over ten thousand pieces of clothing stretching over twenty-five years so that clients can have pieces from the past copied and made to measure. It is a popular service.

Celebrities from a new generation have been drawn to Vivienne’s clothes, leading yet more fans in their footsteps. Heather Graham, Christina Applegate, Jerry Hall and Elizabeth Jagger, Cameron Diaz, Drea de Matteo, Sarah Jessica Parker, R’n’B star Lil’Kim Joy Bryant, Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connolly all favour her clothes, particularly for big events such as the Oscar ceremonies. The publicity-conscious Nigella Lawson wore a corseted black dress to show off her figure at the opening of the Saatchi Gallery in London in the spring of 2003 and while on a promotional tour of America, most notably on the Jay Leno Tonight talk show. Similarly Rosie Millard, the BBC’s Art Correspondent, dramatically boosted her profile when she wore a Vivienne dress with a plunging neckline for the Oscars three years ago. It’s a trick that worked, and she has repeated it since. Vivienne Westwood clothes produce results.

Vivienne’s influence continues to filter down from high fashion to the High Street too. Once again, and twenty years on, Top Shop are reinterpreting the frills and buckles of her ‘Buffalo’ look. And following in Brinton Carpets’ brave and groundbreaking wake, Swatch watches, Waterford/Wedgwood tableware and Wolford hosiery have recently marketed Vivienne Westwood designs exclusive to them. Each has been a lucrative and brand-promoting partnership.

Throughout the Far East and around the Pacific Rim Vivienne is picking up a new generation of clients. In April 2003 she was the only British designer to be invited to stage a major catwalk show at the Shanghai Fashion Festival, in anticipation of the opening of her first store in that city. She already has a shop in Hong Kong and fifteen retail outlets in Japan.

Though much of the menswear is designed by her husband Andreas, who also has a hand in her women’s wear, the idiosyncratic touch that indisputably reveals Vivienne’s inimitable mind can always be seen. Who else could have come up with fabric printed with grass- or red wine-stains, or created a rugby shirt for the Golden Jubilee which featured so many iconic images of Merrie England, from the red rose of England to the orb of Elizabeth I?

What is perhaps most unusual and admirable about Vivienne Westwood is that, well into her seventh decade, she continues to question and to create. Neither age nor success has blunted her busy mind or her combative nature. She remains emotionally engaged with the young, and shares their passion for some of the major political debates of the day. While most of us grow out of ‘It’s not fair,’ Vivienne continues to feel affronted by society’s inequities and hypocrisies and lies wherever she thinks she sees them.

Vivienne espouses issues and uses her celebrity to preach about them. Intellectually, she is a serial polygamist, flitting from one all-consuming passion to another. The seventies saw her committed to anarchy, the eighties to the politically and economically dispossessed and the voluptuous female form, and in the nineties we left her mourning the death of culture, and defending, for example, free entry to museums. The Labour government has reversed the Conservatives’ policy, and once again museums are free. While the chattering classes may chuckle, few would argue that Vivienne’s stands are not heartfelt and in some small way effective in raising awareness.

Recently, one of my Central St Martin’s students, Derren Gilhouley, interviewed Vivienne for Harpers & Queen. He was struck by her assertion that ‘If I could have my time again I would be an eco warrior.’ Today we find Vivienne supporting the ideas and objectives of Noreena Hertz, the anti-globalisation campaigner and author of Silent Takeover. Perhaps grandmotherhood has inspired a greater determination in her to leave a truly worthwhile legacy for her only grandchild, Cora, of whom she is tenderly caring.

Jane Mulvagh

London, July 2003

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

I first met Vivienne Westwood in the autumn of 1983, while researching my book The Vogue History of Twentieth-Century Fashion. In the two preceding years I had become accustomed to interviewing successful designers in handsome premises in the capitals of fashion. Each encounter was fairly similar. It would be formal and conducted in impressively sumptuous surroundings, with careful attention paid to the professional etiquette of sound public relations. The ritual of passing through a series of receptionists and assistants was typically followed by a one-to-two-hour conversation with the designer in his well-appointed office. Across an impressive arrangement of flowers, and against a backdrop of photographs boasting his acquaintance with the famous and the beautiful, we would discuss the motivations and influences that had formed his work.

None of this prepared me for meeting Vivienne.

Her two-room second-floor studio was squalid and cluttered. The railings up the communal outside staircase were hung with sodden, hand-dyed clothes. The entrance was blocked by half-packed boxes of late deliveries or returned orders, and the temperature inside seemed lower than the bracing October evening outside. Stepping over a collapsed ironing board and past a rickety trestle table strewn with unwashed mugs and overflowing ashtrays, I made my way to a corner where, surrounded by half a dozen ragamuffins, the designer, dressed in thick, padded, ankle-length layers of greige felted wool, nodded an informal acknowledgement.

To the hesitant tap-tap of a vintage typewriter operated by a flustered youth, we attempted to begin our interview. Pulling anxiously on a Gitane, Vivienne periodically turned to the typist and snapped, ‘Can’t you stop that noise? It’s really distracting me. I can’t think.’ The typing continued. After half an hour, during which she repeatedly lost her train of thought, she finally said, ‘Sorry, I get really bored talking about my past.’ We appeared to have reached an impasse, and I was preparing to leave when she unexpectedly turned the conversation to incest. In her latest collection she had used hieroglyphs inspired by incest and primitivism and drawn by the New York graffiti artist Keith Haring. She began to ask me questions. Were there any good books on incest? She was fascinated by it. Did I know that it was commonplace in primitive societies? She liked celebrating taboos; the unorthodox was what interested her, ‘to shock, to seduce the public into revolt’.

How had she come across Haring’s work, I asked. ‘That was my boyfriend, Malcolm,’ she beamed. Like a love-struck teenager she repeatedly mentioned Malcolm McLaren as she discussed her work, savouring the enunciation of his name. Finally, as if in confession, she bowed her head, wrung the hem of her heavy skirt between her fingers and confided, ‘I don’t live with Malcolm any more, you know. I don’t see that much of him any more, but he’s still my friend … and there we are.’ She sighed, and added in a voice choked with emotion, ‘Maybe we’ll work a little more closely in the future.’ She was clearly not seeking pity, which made her suffering all the more pitiful. I felt as if I had intruded upon a deep private grief. I was touched by her desperate anguish and her frankness to a total stranger, and could not fail to be curious about such a woman.

Over the next few years I was drawn to Vivienne’s extraordinary work, which was like no other designer’s. While others conformed to the direction that fashion was taking and tried to please the buyers, Vivienne prided herself on her almost militant resistance to orthodoxy, and had little notion of a customer. In the 1980s fashion celebrated clothes that looked rich and fast. Skirts were short, shoulders were wide, heels were high. Women strove to look hard, thin, toned, masculine, powerful and financially independent. Meanwhile, Vivienne’s idiom was the poor, the dispossessed, the anarchic. She promoted a rounded, even chubby, female shape, and dressed it in layered, baggy rags and flat shoes, such as trainers or rubber flip-flops that were fastened round the ankles with bandages. Then in an apparent volte-face, she began to produce the ‘posh’ clothes of an élite, parodying the British establishment and its uniforms of class and tradition. Through-out her creative life she irreverently snatched pieces of fashion history, inspected them, dismantled them and reconstructed them, making something modern and disturbing. As a fashion historian, it amazed me how she could extract modernity and, more surprisingly, sexiness, from a Victorian crinoline or the dowdy garb of the British royal family.

My employer at the time, British Vogue, did not like Vivienne’s earliest and most creative work. Though occasionally mentioned, she was never lauded. She was a maverick: inconsistent, uncommercial, often unwearable but, most of all, anti-establishment, and that was dangerous. Before the nineties, only her ‘Pirates’ (autumn/winter 1981–82) and ‘Harris Tweed’ (autumn/winter 1987–88) collections were extensively featured by Vogue or any other mainstream British glossy magazine; both were seen as suitably romantic, British and free of polemic. Italian Vogue, by contrast, has been consistently fascinated by her work.

Throughout the first half of the eighties, Vogue’s fashion editors were cultivating a delicate relationship with Buckingham Palace, dressing, it was assumed, the future Queen of England. Diana and Vivienne, who in her punk days had been associated with a disrespectful, not to say treasonous, attitude to the monarchy, were two images that did not sit happily together, and the magazine understandably chose to maintain its establishment connections.

But, like Diana, Vivienne is quintessentially English. She could only have emerged from a society that is, on the one hand, steeped in tradition and class deference, and on the other prides itself on being the cradle of liberalism and the tolerance – if not unduly threatened – of eccentric non-conformity and satire. Vivienne needed the taboos and rituals of this relatively small and homogeneous post-colonial society, clinging to its class system and sentimental respect for the monarchy, as a backdrop against which she could create and display her parodic pantomime of dress. Her references and the messages sewn into her clothes were full of meaning both to those who revelled in being irreverent and to those susceptible to being offended by them. The vitriol scrawled across her ‘Seditionaries’ T-shirts, the gentle irony of her Scottish tartans, royal tweeds, Henley stripes, school uniforms and hunting pinks made no sense without this social context.

Gradually, through the mid-eighties, I struck up an acquaintance with Vivienne. She came to the odd party I gave, accompanied by her teenage son Joseph, and they would always be the first to step out onto the dance floor, while other guests were still arriving. She seemed unself-conscious, even shameless, childlike yet intensely serious. Her dancing was manic; an explosion of energy in which she lost herself in a trance: a rock ’n’ roll Shaker, a punk Whirling Dervish.

Sometimes I would receive a call from her assistant, who would tell me that Vivienne wanted to talk about ‘serious things – literature, art, that sort of stuff’. Would I meet her for dinner at the Indian restaurant on Westbourne Grove? She usually arrived very late, having cycled several miles from her studio, then in North London. Dinner over a couple of bottles of red wine – I did not drink – would last until the waiters turned out the lights. It was never a conversation, rather a monologue. She would tell me what she had been reading, then deliver a passionate attack on how the modern world was unfair, stupid, orthodox and evil. Listening to her woolly and selective idealisation of the past, it became clear that, for all her barricade agitprop and her position at the cutting edge of fashion, Vivienne was at heart a bitter romantic. Convinced of her talent and aware of her precarious financial existence, I decided to try and help her.

During the spring 1991 collections, Paris fashion circles were buzzing with the rumour that Gianfranco Ferre’s five-year contract as design chief at Christian Dior would not be renewed. Knowing that Vivienne harboured an ambition to work in couture, I suggested that I introduce her to the house in the hope that they would either consider her as Ferre’s successor (a long shot), or agree to finance and develop her own label.

Armed with her portfolio and as much chutzpah as we could both muster, we must have been a strange sight as we set off from Heathrow at the crack of dawn. Vivienne negotiated the newly-mopped floor in her platforms, one hand swinging a carpet bag, the other hitching up the skirt of her cling-film-tight, gold-printed velvet dress to the hem of her tweed jacket. Atop six-inch-heeled court shoes, I was dressed in a black velvet ‘Rob Roy’ jacket with matching mini and a cavalier’s blouse. Vivienne was in full flow, lecturing on the ancients, the failings of democracy, the legitimacy of élitism and wise rule under a philosopher-king. The monologue was not only targeted at me, but at any official – passport controller, bag inspector – she encountered. Questions like ‘Did you pack your own bag?’ were answered with a snippet of classical political thought. Having been mobbed in the lounge by a crowd of sari-ed Indians who astonishingly recognised her, we finally boarded. Exhausted by Vivienne’s antics – the mundanities of reaching the plane were of no urgency to her – I steered my unsteady ward from check-in to touchdown.

Our appointment the next morning was with Christian Dior’s Directeur Général, Daniel Piette. Dior, one of the world’s truly grand couture houses, occupied a whole block of the wide, tree-lined Avenue Montaigne. The dove-grey façade was punctuated every few metres by a grandiose plaque which tilted down imposingly over one’s head and bore the house’s initials in classic gold script. The ground-floor boutique was fitted with delicate turned-wood display cases that few contemporary cabinetmakers could equal, set with glistening vitrines – no fingerprints here. In one, a virgin-white organza evening blouse for £800, grander in its simplicity than any embroidered rival; in another, a slim, aubergine silk petersham evening pump for £220. And the vendeuses, far too professional to affect Sloane Street stroppiness, snappily dressed in grey or black, were the personification of that Gallic adage, passed from mother to daughter, ‘I cannot afford to buy cheaply.’

Vivienne and I ascended the staircase to the couture salons, where the proportions widened, ceilings heightened and clues to trade were hidden. We were led along a silent corridor, past doors marked ‘Chef de Cabine’, ‘Atelier Flou’ and ‘Atelier Tailleur’, to Daniel Piette’s office. Once the introductions had been made, the floor was handed to Vivienne. I had been confident that this plucky, loquacious Northerner would present her case convincingly, but she remained tongue-tied, nervously tugging her hem, coiling her ringlets and rubbing the corner of her mouth with her index finger.

Unexpectedly forced to become her advocate, I took over, while a sceptical Piette looked on. After fifteen minutes it was clear that words would not suffice, and the portfolio was enlisted. Did Piette recall Lacroix’s great success with the mini-crinoline? He nodded. Well, Vivienne had pre-empted Lacroix by three seasons. And Lagerfeld’s corsets for Chanel? Vivienne had led the way three years earlier. A list of examples was cited where Vivienne had led and others followed. Piette’s head was now bent attentively over the groundbreaking portfolio. Finally I suggested that perhaps he might like to inspect some key pieces from Vivienne’s archives. He agreed, and in doing so left the door ajar for further discussions. Vivienne only found her voice again once she was well out of earshot. The clothes were never sent to Piette, due to the bad communications and sheer disorganisation of her office. Ferre’s contract was renewed for a further five years.

This book is not about the business of fashion. Though Vivienne has consistently been the first to introduce new looks, she has equally consistently failed to capitalise on her fashion lead. She has absolutely no business acumen. Fashion is not an art, it is a trade, and to survive a designer has to sell. Vivienne has scant regard or aptitude for commercialism. Her survival has come despite this failing.

When John Fairchild, proprietor and publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, the trade’s most powerful publication, cited her as one of the six most important designers of the day – along with Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro, Giorgio Armani, Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Lacroix – she was virtually bankrupt. While her peers collected villas, yachts and art, she did not even own her modest flat. As late as 1993, when she had twice been named British Designer of the Year, and been awarded the OBE by the Queen, she still lived a hand-to-mouth existence in a council flat in South London. The entire annual turnover of her business was a mere £600,000. In contrast to the five other designers Fairchild saluted, Vivienne is neither a man nor born into an affluent, or at least educated, background (Ungaro, though from a modest family, was exposed to the refinements of his craft by his father, who was a tailor). Also unlike her peers, she entered fashion in early middle age, not youth.

Compromise for commercial advantage is not in Vivienne’s nature. In her somewhat solipsistic universe, other people (in so far as solipsism may be allowed to admit other people) are mad not to see things her way. She has not succeeded – it’s doubtful if she every really tried – in charming or endearing herself to colleagues, peers, the press or those with, as she crudely calls it, ‘clout’. André Leon Talley of Vanity Fair says, ‘Most female editors are just plain scared of her. They’d rather not deal with her.’

For someone notoriously uncouth and undiplomatic, Vivienne has one extraordinary social skill. She can elicit help and sympathy where she wishes, and on her own terms. And yet, no matter what an individual does to help her, she has no sense of indebtedness or loyalty. She can be belligerent, rough, rude and selfish. Yet she commands remarkable loyalty from employees and associates. Time after time, they told me she was mean, cruel, heartless and even vicious towards them. Nevertheless, with few exceptions they are happy to have worked alongside a truly original talent who could habitually astonish them with her powers of creativity. Her creativity cannot be copied, anticipated, second-guessed. It is inimitable.

In 1993, Vivienne asked me to write her autobiography. I refused. I did not want to be put into the uncomfortable position of being a ghostwriter, particularly to a woman with such a strong personality and an uncompromising point of view. I spent the next year persuading her to cooperate with a biography which I would write. My conditions were that it would be authorised by her, and I would have access to her, but under no circumstances would she be allowed to read the manuscript. In August 1994, she agreed.

Within four months, Vivienne told me she had had second thoughts. When I asked her why, she would not, or could not, offer an explanation. In the meantime, she had approached family members, friends and colleagues, past and present, and requested that they did not speak to me. Apart from the conversations with her family that I had had over the eleven years I had known her, I have had no additional access to them. As a result, comparatively little information has been forthcoming about Vivienne’s father and her first husband, Derek Westwood. Fortunately, I had already managed to reach some of her school and childhood friends. Equally fortunately, most of her associates and friends disregarded her injunction, and agreed to talk to me (of necessity, the identities of some of them have been disguised). Then, curiously, in 1996 various friends and colleagues still close to Vivienne, such as Gene Krell and John Walford, received her permission to cooperate with me. In addition, others who had originally abided by her request changed their minds and spoke to me candidly. To all of them I am indebted.