Goodbye Lady Westwood

«The only reason I work in fashion is to destroy the word conformism».
This is one of the symbolic phrases that clearly identifies the thought and strength of the English stylist Vivienne Westwood, great provocateur and queen of punk, who died on December 29, 2022 at the age of 81.
Champion of sustainability, activist, pacifist, feminist, she has always fought against the tide for equity and justice with the only weapons she knew: plays on fabrics and volumes, eccentric and sometimes scandalous combinations, provocative phrases printed on T-shirts… Excessive and eclectic, she worked in the world of fashion, music and politics to the last, alongside her husband and creative partner Andreas Kronthaler.

Vivienne Westwood was born in England in a small village in Derbyshire in 1941 and spent the first years of her childhood taking refuge in the woods near her home where she imagined an enchanted world and began to create her own personal aesthetic codes . At the end of the 1950s her family moved to London, she studied fashion and goldsmithing, then abandoned her studies, found a job, got married and began her adventure by opening her first shop in 1971. It was an immediate success, the designer intercepted the youth movement of the time, enhances its angularity and creates a fashion beyond fashion. It will then be a succession of new points of sale, fashion shows and travel. She shapes the aesthetics of punk, becoming its muse and queen, expresses the rebel culture and leads an incredible life in the name of its four pillars: fight against climate change, stop all wars, defend human rights and fight against capitalism.

She Awarded the title of Officer of the British Empire in 2005 and that of Dame de Commander in 2006, she continues her tireless commitment to fashion and civil rights. Among his latest battles we remember the one against reality shows and social media and the one for the environment with the slogan: "Buy less, choose well, make it last" - "Buy less, choose well and make it last a long time"


Elisa d'Adamo
NP February 2023