Type Factors is a weekly column about how trend intersects with the broader world.
There is a memorable photograph of Dame Vivienne Westwood, her towering platform heels edging their approach out of a gilded body, a portray come to life. It was a promotional stunt for the designer’s Swatch collaboration in 1992—and it feels just like the picture that the majority exemplifies her. After Westwood’s passing on Thursday, social media was rife with extra historically “punk” imagery of Westwood, together with the no-underwear ensemble she wore to simply accept her OBE that very same yr. That is truthful, provided that Westwood is the style determine most carefully related to the punk motion. She dressed the Intercourse Pistols and Bow Wow Wow’s Annabella Lwin throughout her relationship with each bands’ supervisor Malcolm McLaren, and introduced the music’s DIY spirit to her designs, festooning T-shirts with security pins and jackets with bondage straps.
Westwood selling Swatch in 1992.
mirrorpix
However to scale back Westwood to a human anarchy image is to do her a disservice. Behind that punk edifice knew was a lady who knew sufficient about custom to shatter it. Whereas questioning empire, Westwood used a few of its hallmarks as her constructing blocks; blended in with the rise up, there was reverence. By the ’80s, her references included Outdated Grasp work, corsets, and crinolines (which she remodeled into the infamous “mini-crini”). After I met Westwood in individual for the primary time, an expertise akin to seeing a historic determine come out of a museum-worthy body, she instantly recognized the gown I used to be carrying as being impressed by a Frans Hals portray. I quickly discovered that she was extra curious about speaking about Gainsborough than gossiping about trend, and that she inspired design college students to repeat basic artistic endeavors as a part of their coaching.
Westwood’s corsets and pearl necklaces are nonetheless fashion-insider obsessions.
John van Hasselt-Corbis
There is a cause her classic items nonetheless go viral, discovering followers in Bella Hadid, Dua Lipa, and FKA Twigs. Westwood’s work had virtually nothing to do with no matter present tendencies had been crowding the runway, however slightly along with her personal private obsessions. She was deep in Victorian and Regency trend whereas others had been pushing bandage attire. Her collections could possibly be impressed by pirates, witches, dandies, or the heroines of Watteau work. She discovered methods to make even the staidest of British standbys—tartan, Harris tweed, and Sloane Ranger garb—look subversive.
Bella Hadid bowing all the way down to Westwood at her spring 2020 present.
David M Benett
Westwood’s girls sported cleavage-spilling, cherubim-flecked corsets or teetered on chopines, however they at all times appeared utterly in management. Her supermodel moments had been legendary: Carla Bruni went L’Origine du Monde mode in a fur G-string (Westwood would later surrender fur). Kate Moss ate ice cream topless in a tricorn hat. Linda Evangelista swaddled round in an 18th-century-style inexperienced robe. Naomi Campbell topped from her sky-high heels, solely managing to turn out to be extra legendary within the course of.
Linda Evangelista in a robe from Westwood’s Les Femmes assortment for spring 1996.
PIERRE VERDY
Her mastery of tailoring (one thing she credited to her British background, telling me “I feel there’s one thing in your bones” while you’re an English designer) ensures that her items nonetheless flutter, shock, and shock. They really feel like items of trend historical past, however fortunately, not the type that have to molder behind museum glass.
Alek Wek in Westwood’s spring 1998 present.
Penske Media
Maybe essentially the most punk factor about Westwood was the way in which she approached trend and politics. Earlier than the appearance of the designer-as-activist, she was warning us about local weather change, talking out in opposition to fracking, supporting controversial figures like Julian Assange, and fascinating in media-savvy stunts to attract consideration to her pet causes. And because the individual on the helm of the uncommon woman-led, unbiased model in trend on the time, she was a feminist inspiration.
Backstage at London Trend Week in 1992.
Dave Benett
However, maybe in a gesture of English modesty, or one in all punk defiance, she was reluctant to simply accept any of those labels once I requested her about them onstage as she accepted the André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award from SCAD. To borrow the title of one in all her legendary retailer ideas, she was a seditionary to the tip. Our business was one of many many issues she refused to take too significantly. As she mentioned that day, “I do not faux trend is a few holy factor.”
Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s trend options director and the creator of the guide Gown Code. Her work has beforehand appeared within the New York Occasions, the New Yorker, W, New York journal, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.
