Rebel Yell

Fashion iconoclast Vivienne Westwood raids her closet for a trip down memory lane.

You might know Vivienne Westwood as the British fashion designer who clothed the punk generation in safety pins and spiked dog collars; her muse was a band of musically inclined anarchists known as the Sex Pistols. You may also know her as a hardcore champion of human rights, who designed a 2005 line of baby tees bearing the slogan “I Am Not A Terrorist, Please Don’t Arrest Me.” Given her political inclinations, it’s no surprise that she would refer to Tony Blair and George W. Bush as “little unimaginative people”—the shock, however, is that in the next British election she threatens to cast her vote for the right wing. “For the simple reason that it’s the party in power now, and in the election after that I’ll vote for the left,” says Westwood. The 65-year-old is now the subject of a retrospective opening at the de Young Museum on March 3. Expect to see corsets, mini-crinolines and those blue mock-croc platform shoes that felled Naomi Campbell on the catwalk in 1993. 7x7 recently spoke with the punk princess over the phone from her London studio.

What were you like as a child?
Oh, god. I remember being very upset at the thought of the world being so dreadful. I also remember that I was always sticking up for children who were in trouble.

What’s it like to have Vivienne Westwood as a mother?
I can tell you from my point of view what it’s like to have children. The first thing that I understood was that my [two] children had unique personalities, right from the beginning. They haven’t changed since the first time I saw them. They’ve got very strong characters that way, but neither of my sons is as intellectual as  I am—they don’t read books like I do. They have other interests and other attitudes.

How have you imprinted their lives?
In their careers, I would guess. My younger son, Joseph, started [the lingerie company] Agent Provocateur, and my older son, Ben, is a soft-porn photographer, so there you are!

Congratulations on your retrospective.
It’s the most amazing collection of clothes! When I put everything together, I was absolutely astonished. I’m not saying it to blow my own trumpet—I’m just very proud of it.

What is your primary fashion influence?
I try to confront the establishment in the way  I look and dress. Even to the point of putting graphics on T-shirts that say all kinds of political things. But mostly I get my ideas from the past. One of my recent collections looks like somebody got left behind in the Vietnamese jungle and somehow stopped to read a few books—a revolutionary look in a civilized age.

Are you influenced at all by the 21st century?
I never listen to pop music. I never read magazines. I never watch TV. I don’t even go  to the cinema. I don’t even know who those actors are. I haven’t seen half of my customers on- screen. I find the cinema really boring.

Are you designing with a sense of UK pride when you use tartans and tweeds?
I love English fabrics because of their history. You’ve got all those uniforms for hunting tigers, or going to the North Pole, or working in Parliament, or going to school. Traditional things are wonderful, and especially when they are reinvented. The point is that I am English.

You worked closely with the Sex Pistols. Do you share the same antiestablishment views as the punk generation?
The punk generation was just a bunch of kids with nothing better [to do] than to attack the older generation. I was involved for more-political motives. I have changed completely since then, but I also didn’t do what a lot of people did from that movement, which is climb a little pedestal and make a career out of being a token rebel.

What political causes are you standing by these days?
My message is focused on culture. If you’re cultivated—well read, well traveled—then you are able to see different points of view. You must also fight for human rights. If you take away human rights, you take away civilization and any possibility of culture.

Do you criticize the average person’s style?
I try not to notice. I think people today have never looked so ugly in the whole history of the entire world.

What’s so bad about us?
 Cavemen must have looked so much more brilliant than people look today. Conformity is so awful. People today look so cloned.

Do you consider conformity to be a fashion faux pas?
Fashion has nothing to do with conformity. There is one good thing amidst all that stamped-out clothing: shoes.Thank God for high-heel shoes.

"Vivienne Westwood: 36 Years in Fashion," at the de Young March 3-June 10, famsf.org.

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