Vivienne Westwood: Icons of Fashion

This beautifully illustrated book tells the incredible story of Dame Vivienne Westwood, a British fashion designer largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.

Traditionalist, provocateur, utterly contemporary: Vivienne Westwood was one of British fashion’s most famous – and most contradictory – designers. The woman who helped create punk clocked up over four decades on the cutting edge and produced some of modern style’s most recognisable looks.

Westwood came to worldwide attention when she made clothes for the boutique that she and Malcolm McLaren ran on King’s Road, which became known as Sex. Their ability to synthesize clothing and music shaped the 1970s UK punk scene, which included McLaren’s band, the Sex Pistols. She viewed punk as a way of “seeing if one could put a spoke in the system”.

Westwood opened four shops in London and eventually expanded throughout Britain and the world, selling a varied range of merchandise, some of which promoted her political causes such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, climate change and civil rights groups.