Vivienne Westwood, influential fashion maverick, dies at 81 - Canada.com

Fashion decorator Vivienne Westwood has died successful London astatine 81 years old. Photo by Jeff Spicer /Getty Images

LONDON — Vivienne Westwood, an influential manner maverick who played a cardinal relation successful the punk movement, died Thursday astatine 81.

Westwood’s eponymous manner location announced her decease connected societal media platforms, saying she died peacefully. A origin of decease was not disclosed successful the statement.

Article content

Westwood’s manner vocation began successful the 1970s with the punk explosion, erstwhile her extremist attack to municipality thoroughfare benignant took the satellite by storm. But she went connected to bask a agelong vocation highlighted by a drawstring of triumphant runway shows successful London, Paris, Milan and New York.

The sanction Westwood became synonymous with benignant and cognition adjacent arsenic she shifted absorption from twelvemonth to year. Her scope was immense and her enactment was ne'er predictable.

As her stature grew, she seemed to transcend fashion, with her designs shown successful depository collections passim the world. The young pistillate who had scorned the British constitution yet became 1 of its starring lights, and she utilized her elite presumption to lobby for biology reforms adjacent arsenic she kept her hairsbreadth dyed the agleam shadiness of orangish that became her trademark.

Article content

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

Andrew Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute astatine the Metropolitan Museum of New York, said Westwood would beryllium celebrated for pioneering the punk look, pairing a extremist manner attack with the anarchic punk sounds developed by the Sex Pistols, managed by her then-partner, Malcolm McLaren.

“They gave the punk question a look, a style, and it was truthful extremist it broke from thing successful the past,” helium said. “The ripped shirts, the information pins, the provocative slogans. She introduced postmodernism. It was truthful influential from the mid-70s. The punk question has ne'er dissipated — it’s go portion of our manner vocabulary. It’s mainstream now.”

Westwood’s agelong vocation was afloat of contradictions: She was a lifelong rebel who was honored respective times by Queen Elizabeth II. She dressed similar a teen adjacent successful her 60s and became an outspoken advocator of warring planetary warming, informing of planetary doom if clime alteration was not controlled.