 Wysłany: Czw 9:32, 03 Mar 2011 Temat postu: The life of Vivienne Westwood |
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| The life of Vivienne Westwood
Surveying the life and career of Vivienne Westwood is, as Westwood herself has described it, like trying to get a ship into a bottle, for her story is an extraordinary one. She was a central figure in the London Punk movement in the mid 1970s and has gone from being a subversive shop owner to a pillar of the British fashion establishment. As an independent female in a highly competitive industry she has survived without compromising her ideals. Her vision has at times been at odds with the rest of the fashion world, yet her work has often been prescient. She has provoked outrage, amusement and ultimately respect. Her overriding gift to fashion is a conviction that clothing can change the way people think. She once said: ‘I think that the real link that connects all my clothes is this idea of the heroic'. As a self-taught designer, Westwood has brought an utterly original slant to fashion, and been responsible for many fashion ideas that are now taken for granted. Although her clothes are often revolutionary, she has embraced traditional British fabrics and materials, and made them her own. While her work in the 1980s,large briefcases, post Punk, was wildly eclectic, the dominant theme of the 1990s was historicism. Westwood is ambitious for her craft. She has great faith in fashion as personal propaganda, as mental and physical stimulation, saying ‘clothes can give you a better life'. Vivienne Westwood was born in Derbyshire in 1941. Her family moved to London when she was a teenager and in 1965 she met art student Malcolm McLaren. Their working relationship lasted from 1970 until 1983, and memorably launched Punk. Fashion became for Westwood ‘a baby I picked up and never put down'. Between 1971 and 1981 the couple ran a shop at 430 Kings Road in London which became the centre of the emerging Punk movement. |
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