VIVIENNE WESTWOODPunk. Dame. Designer. Rebel. Millionaire. Mother. Radical. All words one could use to describe Vivienne Westwood, a woman who is perhaps the most influential British designer the world has ever seen.
In an industry predominantly created to showcase beauty, Westwood uses her skills to advocate higher causes, through her passion for art, history and social justice. In doing so she redefined what being a designer could represent, inspiring a wave of others dedicated to using fashion as a means of sparking cultural change.
Westwood was born in 1941, in the village of Tintwistle, Derbyshire. Her parents, Gordon and Dora, had met two years previously at the onset of the Second World War. She was the eldest of three children, in a family far removed from the English elite: Gordon worked as a storekeeper in an aircraft factory while Dora helped make ends meet by working in a local cotton mill.