As news breaks that Vivienne Westwood has died, one colleague remembers the lessons she took from a fashion legend
She wasn’t wearing couture, in fact she wasn't wearing much at all except for a shower cap, the first time I became really interested in Vivienne Westwood. It wasn’t even her own campaign but a video for animal rights group PETA, where showering, she spoke about how vegetarianism saves water. I was twenty-seven and working in fashion by day, my nights spent on a sustainability crusade, deep diving into the impact of industrial fishing and carbon emissions .
Vivienne was more aware than anyone of the contradictions between making clothes and reducing waste. People her clothes, so she made collections with greener fabrics like hemp, vegetable dyes and emblazoned them with environmental messages. For many of us, their conscious credentials only heightened their desirability. Her catwalk shows were stages for protest, the clothes beautiful but never overshadowing the point that she’d be making.
I have one of the ‘Repopulate Venice’ jumpers from that collection, and I can count the rest of the Vivienne Westwood clothes I own on one hand. In the press office, we lived and breathed her mantra to ‘buy less’ and so instead of purchasing pieces, we borrowed clothes from the collection rails. At the end of the season I would pack everything up, well worn by staff, on photoshoots and by celebrities.
Fittingly, in the end I left Vivienne Westwood for a job with PETA. A year after that my husband died, one of my favourite photographs is of him standing at a protest with a giant Vivienne Westwood ‘Climate Revolution’ sign. I’ve learnt in grief, that how we have live continues to echo across all those we leave behind. We’d do well to hear these words from Vivienne then, ‘make full use of your character and full use of your life on earth’. And turn off the lights.
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