She was the anarchic idealist who stormed the battlements of the status quo and transformed Britain.
She was a would-be revolutionary, fired by a hatred of corruption and global injustice, who despaired at the indolent passivity of youth.
She had an enviable self-confidence, believing herself an exceptional craftswoman. At grammar school in Glossop, she saw herself " a kind of champion." "Honestly", she said, "at the age of five, I could have made a pair of shoes."Two boys wearing Vivienne Westwood protest T-shirts. She wanted young people to get angry and change the world. They sadly disappointed her.
So began one of Britain's great creative partnerships. They moved into a tiny flat in Clapham, had a child and launched a cultural revolution that shook, and sometimes frightened, the world. But attraction overcame everything. Her childhood had been happy, but a cultural desert. Creatively, McLaren was an awakening; introducing her to art, music and helping her transform "from dolly bird into a chic, confident dresser." Westwood rekindled the partnership, blossomed artistically and simply ignored the abuse.
The clothes, of course, were like nothing else. They were radical and individualistic, sticking two-fingers up at rival street-fashions like flower-power, Teddy Boy and Mod. Later, McLaren would boast he was a "con man", a Svengali who twisted popular culture into nothing more than a convenient marketing gimmick. For Westwood, the movement was more profound; seeing it as as counter-cultural youth insurgency against the corruption of the old world order.
So they took their subversive ideas and stormed the catwalks of London and Paris. Working alone on a little sewing-machine in her front room, Westwood put the pieces together using her own body as a template. She happened to be the perfect size 10. In the end, she made a fortune. One show in Paris was over in the time it takes to hard boil an egg, but featured clothes worth more than a million pounds. When Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw wanted a wedding dress, she turned to Westwood. The woman who ran a shop on the Kings Road had become a major global brand.Vivienne Westwood campaigned on a range of environmental causes.
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