Vivienne Westwood Dead: Fashion Designer Was 81

Vivienne Westwood, the English manner designer who introduced punk fashion to the planet, died on Thursday. She was 81.

“Vivienne Westwood died these days, peacefully and surrounded by her spouse and children, in Clapham, South London,” a publish on her official Twitter web page reads. “The entire world needs folks like Vivienne to make a modify for the far better.”

The announcement involves the subsequent quotation from Westwood: “Tao religious method. There was by no means extra have to have for the Tao currently. Tao presents you a emotion that you belong to the cosmos and offers reason to your daily life it provides you these a sense of identification and strength to know you’re living the lifestyle you can reside and hence ought to be living: make complete use of your character and whole use of your everyday living on earth.”

1st growing to prominence in the 1970s as the co-proprietor of the boutique Intercourse alongside with Intercourse Pistols supervisor Malcolm McLaren, Westwood aided to condition the model of the U.K. punk scene.

The store became a meeting put for punk bands, and Westwood’s creations, worn by London punk rockers, launched a new style to the planet that created use of pinned-jointly parts, rubber and plastic clothes, lots of zippers, tartan bondage trousers, torn fabric and graffitied t-shirts. Chrissie Hynde and customers of the Sex Pistols ended up amid the influential shop’s staff.

The shop was renamed Seditionaries – Apparel for Heroes and then World’s Conclusion as Westwood’s pursuits moved absent from the punk scene.

Customers of bands which includes Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Slits were motivated by her trend, and Viv Albertine of the Slits wrote in her memoir, “Vivienne and Malcolm use apparel to shock, irritate and provoke a reaction but also to encourage alter. Mohair jumpers, knitted on big needles, so loosely that you can see all the way through them, T-shirts slashed and created on by hand, seams and labels on the outdoors, demonstrating the design of the piece these attitudes are reflected in the music we make. It’s Ok to not be great, to display the workings of your lifestyle and your thoughts in your music and your clothes.”

In addition to her trend collections, she made the uniforms for flight attendants from Virgin Atlantic and provided wardrobe for Elisabeth Shue in “Leaving Las Vegas” as perfectly as for “Shadowboxer” and “Twenty-1.”

A 2018 documentary, “Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist” coated her existence and function, and she was portrayed in the Fx mini-series “Pistol” by Talulah Riley. Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw character wore a person of Westwood’s wedding gown creations in the movie variation of “Sex and the Town.”

Westwood was a longtime political activist, doing work to battle consumerism, protect the natural environment and protest will cause this sort of as wage inequality.

She is survived by her partner, Andreas Kronthaler, and two sons.