BeSPOKE 07

Upper leFt: First biba store
on aBinGDon roaD,
KensinGton, lonDon
and soMe oF her Creations.
Upper right: carnaBy sreet,
lonDon.
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a means with which to change society), she was
married with a child.
the first effect of this meeting was the break up
of Vivienne’s marriage to derek westwood - her
maiden name was actually swire. and soon after
they opened that shop in king’s road in london
which would change its name continually (let it
rock, then sex, then too Fast to live too young
to die, then seditionaries and lastly world’s end)
which was to change the history of fashion. it was
1971.perhaps not everyone knows that before he
set up the sex pistols and all that followed on from
it - including in the collective imagination in which
it is still inspirational now - Malcolm Mclaren had
auditioned in the big apple with another group,
the new york dolls, who are now universally acclaimed
as the precursors of punk rock. and it was
precisely these outrageous, over-the-top ‘dolls’
whose costumes Mclaren commissioned Vivienne
to design and produce entirely in red material, including
sM inspired vinyl, which put them on the
stage with a communist flag and a hammer and
sickle in the background. the adventure of the new
york dolls soon ended and Malcolm returned to
london to think up “the greatest confidence trick
in rock ‘n’ roll” - as julian temple’s documentary
telling the story of the rise and fall of the sex pistols
from Mclaren’s exclusive, totalitarian point of view
would call it a few years later. neither the sex pistols
nor anyone else in this story had a straightforward
or unidirectional life. at the outset the band was
called the strand and john lydon (later rebaptised
johnny rotten) who was selected by Mclaren in
1975 wasn’t in it yet. lydon was a frequent visitor
to the westwood/Mclaren shop which was called
sex at the time but was soon to be renamed seditionaries.
torn clothes, safety pins, porn iconography, provocative
slogans, bondage and chains: punk style
was born, the shop was its temple and Vivienne
and Malcolm its undisputed high priests. it has
been suggested that the stylist took some of the
elements in punk style from american musician
richard hell but no-one is entirely original and
genius consists in then creating something which
has never been seen before. the rest is music and
fashion history: the success of the sex pistols, god
save the Queen which came out on the day of the
Queen’s jubilee and immediately soared to the
top of the charts, the mythology expertly created
around it by Mclaren, punk dress codes, rotten
leaving the band, the break up of the band and the
tragic finale of the love story between sid Vicious
and nancy spungen at new york’s Chelsea hotel.
later Vivienne and Mclaren worked together on
the first two collections - pirates and buffalo girls
- designed by westwood under the world’s end
label which picked what they wanted from history
and the third world, native american culture and
the women of peru and entered the halls of legend.
then they went their separate ways both as a couple
and professionally. Mclaren devoted himself
to his musical projects from adam and the ants
to bow wow wow and produced his own albums
which moved from hip hop to combinations of
opera and electronic music to voguing - launched
before Madonna - in an always expert balancing act
between genius and hoax. Vivienne continued her
journey through culture and fashion history which
took her in 1985 to the creation of Mini-Crini which
marked a turning point in her career in which she
combined english savile row traditions and tartan
fabrics with silhouettes taken from earlier centuries
expertly combined with her characteristic irreverence
and seditionary attitude.
Quirino Conti has written this of her working style:
“(…) she paid great attention to the eighteenth
century but also to the seventeenth and sixteenth
centuries as long as it was english - even adam -
which she reconstructed and reassembled with the
highly unusual spatial sense of another englishman,
Charles james, and a nineteenth century tournure
en strapontin”.
and to conclude, a son was born from the Mclarenwestwood
collision, joseph Corré (the surname is
that of the maternal grandmother of his father, a
sephardic jew from portugal) who founded the famous
sexy lingerie brand agent provocateur with
his wife serena rees in 1994. definitely a matter of
‘talis pater, talis filius’ though, in this case, this latin
saying needs updating to include the maternal role
and what a role it was!
and it was serena herself who pronounced some
particularly spot-on comments about her exmother-in-law
(yes, in the meantime she and joseph
split up and gave the company up): “the great
brands are selling a lifestyle not just clothing. but
all Vivienne’s attention was focused on the clothes.
she never played a part in the fashion game”.
god save the Queen.
Upper leFt
vivienne WestWooD
in her shop “let it roCk” 1971,
photo: DaviD parKinson © .
CoUrtesy oF vivienne
WestWooD.
Upper right, an iMage
oF johnny rotten,
with handwritten notes.
photo: roy stevenson © .
CoUrtesy oF vivienne
WestWooD
lower leFt, inVite
oF the First MClaren/
westwood ColleCtion
FroM 1981, titled “pirates”.
photo: anDy earl © .
CoUrtesy oF vivienne
WestWooD.
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