Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, died Thursday at 81.
LONDON —
The name Westwood became synonymous with style and attitude even as she shifted focus from year to year, her range vast and her work never predictable. Westwood’s long career was full of contradictions: She was a lifelong rebel honored several times by Queen Elizabeth II. She dressed like a teenager even in her 60s and became an outspoken advocate of fighting climate change, warning of planetary doom.
“I don’t, because we were just saying to the older generation, ‘We don’t accept your values or your taboos, and you’re all fascists,’” she responded. “I just tell people, stop buying clothes,” she said. “Why not protect this gift of life while we have it? I don’t take the attitude that destruction is inevitable. Some of us would like to stop that and help people survive.”
She met McLaren in the 1960s while working as a primary school teacher after separating from her first husband, Derek Westwood. She and McLaren opened a small shop in Chelsea in 1971, the tail end of the “Swinging London” era ushered in by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. “Vivienne is gone and the world is already a less interesting place,” tweeted Chrissie Hynde, the frontwoman of the Pretenders and another former employee.
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