Vivienne Westwood Case Study

Dame Vivienne Westwood has been designing and expressing herself through fashion for the last 39 years. She is a British fashion designer who greatly impacted the British Punk Movement in the seventies. Westwood along with her partner, in the early years, Malcolm McLaren worked together in making 430 King's Road the landmark it is today. Vivienne Westwood is a skilled tailor and designer who looks to the past in order to create the beautiful pieces worn in the present. She studies and appreciates the craftsmanship that went into the work and tries to recreate that in her many collections. Sometimes the message she is trying to get across is loss in translation for the everyday consumer, but for her peers and other people in the industry they get the message loud and clear.

Vivienne Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire on April 8, 1941 in Glossop, Derbyshire. Westwood was the oldest of three children. From a very early age she had a love for fashion. Along with a love for fashion she also had a keen sense of individuality. In the late forties Christian Dior's "New Look" was unveiled to the world. Vivienne Westwood was inspired by the "New Look" and as a result she started to create clothing for herself based off the "New Look." When Westwood was seventeen she and her family moved from Glossop to Harrow in northwest London in search of a better life. When she moved to Harrow she left primary school and started attending school at the Harrow School of Art, however she quickly stopped doing that after one semester. In order to support herself Westwood started selling jewelry that she had created out on the streets of London. Vivienne Westwood later started teaching children as a primary school teacher; it is at this time that she meets her future husband Derek Westwood. They later marry and have their first child Ben. When Ben Westwood was born Westwood stopped teaching in order to care for him, however she soon started teaching again. Vivienne Westwood's marriage to Derek Westwood did not last that long she got a divorce from Derek in 1965. It is around this time that Vivienne Westwood meets Malcolm McLaren.

Malcolm McLaren was born on January 22, 1946 in Stoke Newington, London. McLaren was raised by his maternal Grandmother, Rose Corré Isaacs, who was once a diamond merchant at Hatton Garden's. Malcolm McLaren's parents divorced when he was two and his mother later got remarried to Martin Levi. As did Vivienne Westwood McLaren also left school at an early age and started supporting himself through various odd jobs. Malcolm became increasing influenced by the Situationist movement. The Situationist movement was an international political and artistic movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Situationist movement promoted strange and provocative actions as a way of enacting social change. With these thoughts and ideas he and was able to seamlessly combine them with his love of both fashion and music. In 1965 McLaren, 18 met Westwood, 24, while attending an art school. A year later she and McLaren had a child together named Joseph Ferdinand Corré. In 1971 Malcolm McLaren opened up a shop on King's Road in London where Vivienne Westwood began to make and sell clothes.

In 1971 Vivienne Westwood stopped teaching and started working at 430 King's Road in London, England. 430 King's Road is the address for the boutique that Malcolm McLaren had opened up. When the shop first opened it was named Let It Rock and was used to sell 1950s inspired pieces and memorabilia. For the Let It Rock collection Westwood created a pair of drainpipe pants, skinny jeans as they are called today, for Malcolm and then created more to be sold at the boutique. For the ladies Westwood started creating mohair sweaters. Let it Rock was a successful venture in its' own right for the couple, and they soon began working on the next collection. In the early years of Westwood's fashion career when she and McLaren came up with a concept/collection she would showcase it at 430 King's Road. Every time they showcased a new collection the boutique would undergo a makeover redoing the inside so that it would fit the image of the new collection. The inside of the boutique was not the only thing to change the name on of the boutique also changed in support of the new collection. Vivienne Westwood had four collections shown at 430 King's Road before her first showing at Olympia.

Too Fast Too Live Too Young Too Die was the next collection showcased at 430 King's Road. The collection featured second-hand jeans, customized leather and double-breasted Zoot suits with padded shoulders and pegged trousers, and the couple also designed glitter 'Dominator' and 'Triumph' T-shirts. (Wilcox) For this collection Westwood started customizing T-shirts using everything from zippers and studs to feathers and chains the first shirt featured the word "rock" later on she created a T-shirt that said "f***" then someone commissioned the boutique for a tee that said "perve" (Westwood). In 1974 Westwood and McLaren were prosecuted for wearing T-shirts that depicted a homosexual cowboy under the obscenity laws for "exposing to public view an indecent exhibition." In the early years of her career Vivienne Westwood was influenced by the things going on around her, and she would create pieces that complimented that moment of time. The next collection that was created by Westwood and McLaren was SEX.

"The only reason I'm in fashion is to destroy the word 'conformity'. Nothing's interesting to me unless it's got that element." (Westwood) In 1975 SEX was created. SEX was the start of something new for Westwood and McLaren. The collection featured pieces that were bondage and fetish inspired made mainly out of rubber and leather. The line featured an anti-conformist theme that was love by some and hated by the rest. SEX is said to have been "a haven for the disenfranchised which, in turn, helped to create the phenomenon known as punk rock." (McLaren) SEX may have helped the punk rock movement along, but when Seditionaries was created in 1976 that collection helped to cement the punk rock movement. Seditionaries featured pieces like bondage trousers that were made out of black sateen or wool and featured restrictive straps and also muslin shirts that got better with age. Unlike in the past where it was Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren working together on the collects McLaren started to have less interest for fashion and more for music. When Seditionaries was released McLaren was hard at work putting the band The Sex Pistols on the map. Some say that the "Anarchy" shirt created for the Seditionaries collection