Vivienne Westwood has been uniting fashion and music since she opened her first store with Malcolm McClaren on London’s Kings Road back in 1971. Her store, Let It Rock, initially specialised in Fifties rock’n’roll before changing its name in 1972 to Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, and focusing on rock fashion and black urban culture. In 1974 Westwood changed the shop’s name again to Sex and she began dressing cult band, the New York Dolls. By the time the Sex Pistols appeared wearing Westwood clothes in 1976, the shop’s name had changed again to Seditionaries, and in 1979 it changed for the final time to World’s End.
In 1981, Westwood unveiled her first runway collection, “Pirate”, marking her move away from street culture into the world of traditional tailoring techniques. In 1989 her creativity was formally recognised when John Fairchild, the editor of Women’s Wear Daily, declared her one of the six best designers in the world.
1990 was a significant year for Westwood. She unveiled her “Portrait” collection, revealed her first menswear collection in conjunction with Pitti Uomo in Florence and was awarded the title of British Designer Of The Year, an accolade she was to receive again in 1991. In 1992 she was made an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art and was awarded an OBE. 1993 saw her become Professor of Fashion at the Berliner Hochschule der Kunste. Her first fragrance “Boudoir” was launched in 1998, followed by two further perfumes, Libertine in 2001 and Anglomania in 2004 and 2005 saw the launch of a fine jewellery collection ‘Hardcore Diamonds’. The Victoria & Albert museum in recently hosted her first retrospective, the largest ever exhibition dedicated to a living British fashion designer, currently touring the world.
In 2007 VW ltd. launches two new fragrances, Boudoir Sin Garden and Let it rock. The same year Anglomania is shown at the Mercedes Benz Fashion week in Berlin and the Vivienne Westwood Retrospective exhibition opens in San Francisco in March and in Milan in September.
Vivienne Westwood, in 2007, is also rewarded with the Outstanding Achievement in Fashion at the British Fashion Awards in London.
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