Beauty Icon Wednesday: An Ode to Vivienne Westwood

Name: Dame Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire on April 8th, 1941

Known for: first creating the artfully slashed tees and bondage trousers worn by Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols in the punk Seventies, tripping up catwalk bitch Naomi Campbell with a pair of nine inch platform heels during a 1993 runway show, and gifting Carrie Bradshaw with her now-iconic wedding dress in the first Sex and The City movie. 


Vivienne Westwood is my favourite fashion designer. In keeping with the rock n' rebel theme that's been rolling through my life this week, I felt that Auntie Viv - as I so lovingly refer to her... I wish! - was the best and only choice for this week's Icon. 


One of my fondest memories of living in London was the circuit I would make during my lunch hours. I worked on Oxford Street, and at least once a week I'd routinely make a pilgrimage in homage to this Grande Dame. I would usually make my way first down New Bond Street, well away from the throngs of the main shopping drag, to the multi-level flagship store on Conduit Street that housed all three of Westwood's labels - Gold, Red and Anglomania. Then, after about twenty minutes of torturing myself there with things my beauty counter salary couldn't really afford, I would make the agony complete by heading across Berkeley Street, round the Square and up to her intimate and achingly beautiful Davies Street boutique. Sometimes I would reverse the order, starting at Davies before moving on to Conduit Street, but I would never fail to hit both locations. 




What I think I love most about my Auntie Viv is that she seems to incorporate everything I've ever idolized into her design aesthetic. Her nod to 17th and 18th century fashion history of boned corsets and bustles, her ubiquitous use of plaid, her moderately offensive t-shirts and safety pinned trousers designed as though it were a thumbing of her nose at mainstream society. And it would seem that Westwood's desire to shake things up shows no signs of abating; she has become quite active politically with regular and passionate campaigns for human rights and nuclear disarmament. And though it cannot hope to compete with her own sizable contribution to fashion history, the legacy will live on with her son Joseph, the founder of luxury lingerie brand Agent Provocateur. 


Although Westwood has no formal fashion training, having studied art and worked as a
 primary schoolteacher, her way of cutting clothes to best flatter and celebrate the female figure seems almost instinctive. And that would be the true female figure, with boobs and bum, and not that of a twelve year old anorexic boy. For me, she represents living, breathing proof that a woman can be or do anything and still be sexy, regardless of her age or lot in life. 


And so with that in mind, I ask you: what's not to love??