Designer Vivienne Westwood and her dresses

Vivienne Westwood is another insane designer from England, from those very designers who are so fond of shocking. In our time, it so happened, it is the British who most often take the liberty of experimenting with fashion, making it provocative and even funny, and sometimes turning their collections into real parodies.

Vivienne Isabelle Swire was born on April 8, 1941 in Derbyshire, England. Her parents' job was in the mail. At the age of 17, she and her family moved to London, entered a teacher training college, and she also studied at an art school, which she really did not finish.

Vivienne gets married early. Marries dance hall manager Derek Westwood. They have two children - a daughter and a son, Rose and Ben. But their marriage was not long, after three years of marriage they separate. But the surname of her first husband, Vivienne will leave behind herself, subsequently making her famous all over the world.

In the early 1970s, Vivienne met Malcolm McLaren, then a student of art history, and later the producer of the most popular and notorious group "Sex Pistols". Together they will stay for 13 years. They will have a son - Joseph. Together they will open the first Vivienne Westwood store on Kings Road in Chelsea. At that time, Vivienne Westwood, who finally took up design, before that she worked as a teacher at the school, was looking for inspiration in street fashion, youth subcultures.

Vivienne Westwood's store changed several times, both its theme and name - initially it was called Let It Rock, then Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die, and then Sex. At the time, her shop sold "rubber clothes" and "punk" clothes.

Since 1981, Vivienne Westwood begins to release collections under her own name and participate in London ready-to-wear weeks (ready-made dress), and then in Paris shows.

Since 1981, Vivienne's interest in street and youth fashion grows cold, she begins to be attracted by the art of cutting, transformation, historical costume. And she is once again renaming her store on King's Road to “The End of the World”.

In the 1980s, she repeatedly demonstrates collections that parody fashionable clothes: the seams out, loose loops, hair stained with dirt. Vivienne Westwood is also one of the first to use bras worn over blouses in her collections. She took to the podium and full models.

Vivienne Westwood has not spared politics either. So she supported the Labor Party for a long time, and then in 2007 she suddenly became a Conservative. Vivienne Westwood explained her decision by the fact that, in her opinion, the only worthy politician at that time was David Cameron, who heads the Conservatives.

Vivienne Westwood also participated in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament near the nuclear complex. And in 2005, after the sad events in the London Underground (a policeman mistakenly shot a young man, confusing him with a terrorist), she released a collection of T-shirts with the inscription "I am not a terrorist, do not arrest me."

Today Vivienne Westwood is married to Austrian designer Andreas Kronthaler, who is much younger than her.

In Russia, the Vivienne Westwood brand has long been represented by Olga Rodionova's boutique (Olga herself has been known for her scandalous “The book of Olga” for some time now). Olga Rodionova was friends with Vivienne and maintained friendly relations with her even after the boutique was closed.