Dame Vivienne Westwood, fashion designer, dies aged 81

Iconoclastic British designer rose to prominence by outfitting the Sex Pistols as punk took off in the 1970s



Dame Vivienne Westwood, the pioneering British fashion designer who played a key role in the punk movement, has died in London at the age of 81.

Westwood died “peacefully, surrounded by her family” in Clapham, south London, on Thursday, her representatives said in a statement.

She had continued to do the things she loved, including designing, working on her book and making art, “up until the last moment”, they added.

Her husband and creative partner, Andreas Kronthaler, said: “I will continue with Vivienne in my heart. We have been working until the end and she has given me plenty of things to get on with. Thank you darling.”

Born in the Derbyshire village of Tintwistle in 1941, Westwood’s family moved to London in 1957, where she attended art school for one term. A self-taught designer with no formal fashion training, Westwood learned how to make clothes as a teenager by following patterns and by taking apart secondhand clothes she found at markets in order to understand the cut and construction.

She met band manager Malcolm McLaren in the 1960s while working as a primary school teacher after separating from her first husband, Derek Westwood. The pair opened a small shop on Kings Road in Chelsea in 1971 that became a haunt of many of the bands she outfitted, including the Sex Pistols, who were managed by McLaren.

Her provocative and sometimes controversial designs came to define the punk aesthetic, and Westwood would become one of Britain’s most celebrated fashion designers, blending historical references, classic tailoring and romantic flourishes with harder edged and sometimes overtly political messages.

Westwood and McLaren’s shop changed its name and focus several times, including rebranding as Sex, which saw the pair being fined in 1975 for an “indecent exhibition” there, as well as Worlds End and Seditionaries.

Westwood’s first catwalk show, in 1981, for her Pirates collection, was an important step in the punk rebel becoming one of the fashion world’s most celebrated stars. But she still found ways to shock: her Statue of Liberty corset in 1987 is credited as starting the “underwear as outerwear” trend.

Even as Westwood’s design empire grew into a multimillion-pound business, the designer never lost her activist streak. In 1989 she posed for the cover of Tatler magazine dressed as Margaret Thatcher, over a caption that read: “This woman was once a punk”. She later told Dazed Digital that “the suit I wore had been ordered by Margaret Thatcher from Aquascutum, but she had then cancelled it”.

She was also an outspoken supporter of Julian Assange. In 2020, she suspended herself in a birdcage to protest against the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition from the UK. In 2022 she designed the suit and dress worn by Assange and his wife, Stella Moris, at their wedding.

Up until the end, Westwood wrote regularly on issues of climate and social justice on her website No Man’s Land. Last month she made a statement of support for the climate protesters who threw soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, writing: “Young people are desperate. They’re wearing a T-shirt that says: Just Stop Oil. They’re doing something.”

Tributes poured in for the designer on Thursday night. “Vivienne is gone and the world is already a less interesting place. Love you Viv,” tweeted Chrissie Hynde, the frontwoman of the Pretenders and a former worker at the couple’s store.