Punk rock to the Stone Age
With her thumb and forefinger, Vivienne Westwood tugged at the darts at her bust, then her hips, creating torpedo-like effects on her gold-speckled black cocktail dress, made all the more exaggerated by way of her killer wasp waist.
Wilma Flintstone comes to mind, and, for the designer, that is exactly the aim, given the scrawling prints resembling cave drawings that she presented in her fall ’07 collection, titled “Wake Up, Cave Girl,” in Paris last week. The morning after that she hopped a plane for the opening here of the only U.S. stop for her traveling retrospective, at the De Young Museum through June 10.
“As a human race, we’ve made such a mess of things we should just start all over again, go back to the Stone Age,” she explained during a respite between the media tour last Friday morning and the evening gala, where she turned up in the cocktail dress -- the same one she wore to close the Paris show, she said. “The thing about Stone Age people is they did not realize just how important the human race was or would be. They didn’t realize they had a choice between cultivating themselves, having more social cement and caring and becoming more human. Or the other choice to become the animal that destroys.”
Politics and culture have always played a part in the outspoken British designer’s work, as evidenced in many of the 150 looks on exhibit here representing her 36 years in fashion.
There are the slashed and patched zip-up T-shirts from her first shop in 1971, called Let It Rock, on London’s King’s Road, from where, within eight years and by strategically renaming the space four more times, she and second husband Malcolm McLaren kick-started the cultural revolution known as punk. And there are the complicated knits and exacting tailored tweed suits with bustle silhouettes paired with the kinds of super-high, fetish-like boots the designer was wearing during the media tour she personally hosted.
Boundless energy
An hour into the tour, in which Westwood carefully recalled trivia on each look, a few of us who are roughly half the designer’s 65 years wondered if she would ever tire of standing on the concrete of the new, below-ground costume hall in those rouge-colored platform, lace-up boots with those severe 6-inch spike heels.
“I’m very proud of the exhibition,” she quietly told the crowd, holding the tiny microphone of her headset close to her mouth while simultaneously removing her white pearly framed glasses. A few new looks have been added since the show began at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum three years ago. “I’m very impressed at the number of things I did do.”
The woman who is hailed as the queen mother of punk rock has just about done it all. Yet it’s always according to her own politics and her very own signature style. She remains fiercely independent in her business, which she runs with her partner Carlo D’Amario and her co-designer and third husband, Andreas Kronthaler, a former student she met while teaching in Vienna who is 25 years her junior.
Beyond the 30 or so flagships and the 700 other stores the company sells to globally, the team hopes to finally open a few signature stores, if not widen distribution, in the U.S., where a fervent fan base is sometimes forced to search EBay to score an orb medallion necklace or strappy boot. (The brand sells at Diavolina, Maxfield and Traffic in Los Angeles.)
Being made a dame in 2006 has only emboldened Westwood’s sense of responsibility to speak her mind as a citizen living in a democracy. “It’s all very useful, because people will give you a platform because of who you are. To some, it might only be, ‘Oh, she’s a nut case. There she goes again.’ But at least people know who you are and might even listen.”
That was her hope as her team handed out envelopes filled with a petition letter and fact sheet on Leonard Peltier, the Native American artist jailed for three decades now after being convicted of murdering two FBI agents. Many Native American groups, civil rights leaders, members of Congress and others believe Peltier was not given a fair trial.
“What is happening to Leonard, what is happening to some of these people falsely called terrorists could happen to anybody,” Westwood said.
To that end, the grandmother points to a large metal disk she wears chained as a choker around her ivory neck. Scribbled in black over a red heart is the rallying cry “I am not a terrorist. Please don’t arrest me.” It’s also on a $75 T-shirt in adult and infant sizes that she’s created to raise funds for the human rights group Liberty.
“It’s to do with the war in Iraq and this supposed war against terrorism,” she said. “In England, we’ve had citizens in jail for four years, and they’ve never been told what their crime was. You’ve got Bush here with Guantanamo Bay, and people there who’ve never had a chance to prove their innocence, and everyone calls them terrorists. They are only there on some sort of suspicion and because the government’s decided it’s in the public interest that they should be kept in jail. Where is the fundamental rule of law embodied in habeas corpus?
“You can’t have culture, democracy or civilization unless you have justice before the law. Justice is the first thing you have to fight for.”
Hollywood’s knocking
She will certainly have an expanded platform through her new Hollywood connections. Producer Brian Grazer came knocking a year ago, and now a screenwriter sits nearby, penciling notes on a yellow legal pad as she talks.
“I just thought this Brian Grazer was coming to pick my brains for a film on fashion,” Westwood said. “Then I found out he had all along intended to make a film on me. Luckily, I liked him. I trust them when they say they want to do this film that’s not just a spoof or a glam film. I’m not doing it from an ego point of view that my life is so important but as a representative of a time that is really true and part of our culture and to show the potential of human beings. That interests me.”
Westwood’s best-known mark, certainly, is in fashion. While some of her recurring motifs -- the sculpted corsets, the magnified silhouettes, the asymmetrical seams -- may have in time become less surprising, her influence is no less evident throughout the extremes of clothing today. Designers such as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and even Gwen Stefani endlessly pillage Westwood’s archives, including her advertising and editorial images, as their own.
Besides the plaid and strappy bondage pants that have three decades later become such a staple in mall chains such as Hot Topic, the designer pioneered the application of couture techniques in ready to wear. For her, inspiration comes in the “physical” more than any ephemeral source. This runs the gamut from the preciseness of English tailoring to the slashing of a hem or precious fabric.
“If I’m ever stuck in my work, I just start with a cutting principle. That’s where all the secrets are -- cutting, tearing, taking it all apart.” It’s a conceit of her clothes-making that could just as easily extend to her take on public affairs. “A single idea,” she pointed out, “is a hundred decisions if you take into account the decisions of a lifetime.”
