Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist
Film critic Dr Simon Weaving celebrates the raucous punk fashion of Vivienne Westwood.
Vivienne Westwood fidgets in an overstuffed armchair. The colours — mauve, deep green and black — contrast with her striking, cropped white hair. Her voice is distinct, direct and dogmatic, wrapped in a Cheshire accent.
‘I think what you’ll have to do, is just let me talk and get it over with,’ she says to Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist film director, Lorna Tucker.
From that point, Tucker is at the mercy of Westwood’s irrepressible character. Through scenes of Westwood in a white tank protesting fracking, Westwood’s fierce and eccentric personality blazons through. She reveals her deep concern for the world, a dislike of nostalgia — ‘It’s so boring’ she moans about having to revisit the punk era — and a forceful frankness, as if there’s no time to waste and much yet to do.
A school drop-out from the working-class of North England, Westwood came to the attention of the fashion world through her collaboration with Malcom McLaren. They became the irreverent architects of the punk movement. Anarchy in the UK was designed in their boutique on King’s Road, London, one T-shirt at a time.
Westwood and McLaren’s collaboration — examples of which are now on display in the NGA’s International Galleries on Level 2 — resulted in the some of the most aggressive manifestations of combative resistance through fashion. Their androgynous muslin or cheesecloth shirts, designed and sewn by Westwood and emblazoned with slogans and provocative symbols thought up by McClaren, are iconic and shocking trademarks of 1970s punk.
Considering her outrageous King’s Road roots, how far Westwood has come since those days is nothing short of extraordinary. In 1977, she celebrated the Queen’s Silver Jubilee with a T-shirt showing Her Majesty with a safety pin through the lip. By the time of the Diamond Jubilee, 25 years later, Westwood had been made a Dame (the Queen presiding the event) and was named one of the New Elizabethans — a group of 60 people who’d had the greatest impact on the country in that time.
Documentaries are all about access to the subject matter, and Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist director Lorna Tucker gets about as close as you can to the designer’s world. Tucker ‘camped out’ in Westwood’s life. Perhaps the most intriguing insights are gained when she follows her through the day-to-day business of managing the Vivienne Westwood brand — now a global empire. Westwood clearly still has an eye for the aesthetic of subversion, and mouths-off about decisions she’s made as if she’s never been consulted. The tender counterpoint to Westwood’s unique ravings come from fashion collaborator and second husband Andreas Kronthaler, who fills in the gaps with a loving but languid disinterest.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is a wonderful portrait of an irascible creative personality, taking you from Westwood’s earliest days in post-war England to her latest forays with Greenpeace in Antarctica.
Above all else, Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist makes it clear that Westwood lives her own story — she either leaves others behind (like her first husband) or fights to the end.
Visit the NGA’s International Galleries on Level 2 to see Westwood and McClaren’s punk fashion.
