Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, died Thursday last week at age 81.
Westwood’s fashion career began in the 1970s when her radical approach to urban street style took the world by storm, but she went on to enjoy a long career highlighted by a string of triumphant runway shows and museum exhibitions.
The name Westwood became synonymous with style and attitude even as she shifted focus from year to year, her range vast and her work never predictable.
Photo: AFP 照片：法新社
As her stature grew, she seemed to transcend fashion. The young woman who had scorned the British establishment eventually became one of its leading lights, even as she kept her hair dyed that trademark bright shade of orange.
Andrew Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, said Westwood and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren — her onetime partner — “gave the punk movement a look, a style, and it was so radical it broke from anything in the past.”
“The ripped shirts, the safety pins, the provocative slogans,” Bolton said. “She introduced postmodernism. It was so influential from the mid-70s. The punk movement has never dissipated — it’s become part of our fashion vocabulary. It’s mainstream now.”
Photo: Reuters 照片：路透
Westwood’s long career was full of contradictions: She was a lifelong rebel honored several times by Queen Elizabeth II. She dressed like a teenager even in her 60s and became an outspoken advocate of fighting climate change, warning of planetary doom.
In her punk days, Westwood’s clothes were often intentionally shocking, but she was able to transition from punk to haute couture without missing a beat, keeping her career going without stooping to self-caricature.
“She was always trying to reinvent fashion. Her work is provocative, it’s transgressive. It’s very much rooted in the English tradition of pastiche and irony and satire. She is very proud of her Englishness, and still she sends it up,” Bolton said.
Photo: AFP 照片：法新社
Westwood was self-taught, with no formal fashion training. She told Marie Claire magazine that she learned how to make her own clothes as a teenager by following patterns. When she wanted to sell 1950s-style clothes at her first shop, she found old clothes in markets and took them apart to understand the cut and construction.
Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock, who called Westwood “a one-off, driven, single-minded, talented lady” in a statement to the Associated Press. He said it was a privilege “to have rubbed shoulders with her in the mid ’70s at what was the birth of punk and the worldwide waves it created that still continue to echo and resound today for the disaffected, hipper and wised up around the globe.”
Westwood moved into a fresh type of designing with her “Pirates” collection, exhibited in her first catwalk show in 1981. That breakthrough is credited with taking Westwood in a more traditional direction, showing her interest in incorporating historical British designs into contemporary clothes.
Photo: AFP 照片：法新社
It was also an important step in an ongoing rapprochement between Westwood and the fashion world. The rebel eventually became one of its most celebrated stars, known for reinterpreting opulent dresses from the past and often finding inspiration in 18th-century paintings.
But she still found ways to shock: Her 1987 Statue of Liberty corset is remembered as the start of the “underwear as outerwear” trend.
(AP)
Photo: Reuters 照片：路透
龐克運動關鍵人物、引領風騷的時尚教母薇薇安．魏斯伍德，於上週四去世，享壽81歲。
魏斯伍德的時尚生涯始於1970年代，她激進的城市街頭風格當時風靡全球。之後她仍盛名不墜，一場場成功的時裝秀與博物館展覽即為最佳註腳。
魏斯伍德這名字成了風格與態度的代名詞，即便她聚焦的重心年年都在轉變，範圍之廣，其作品也總是出人意料。
隨著地位越來越高，她似乎也超越了時尚。這位蔑視英國當權派的年輕女性，最後卻成為其領軍人物之一，儘管她的頭髮一直是染成亮橙色招牌形象。
紐約大都會博物館服裝藝術部策展人安德魯．波頓表示，魏斯伍德和性手槍樂團經理馬康‧麥拉林——她的前任伴侶——「給了龐克運動一種外觀、一種風格，非常激進，因而打破了過去的任何事物」。
「破爛的襯衫、別針、挑釁的口號」，波頓說；「她引入了後現代主義。從70年代中期開始，它就很有影響力。龐克運動從未消失——它已成為我們時尚語彙的一部分。現在已是主流」。
魏斯伍德漫長的職業生涯充滿矛盾：她一生都是反叛者，多次受到伊麗莎白二世女王的嘉獎。六十多歲時仍穿得像青少年，她也大力倡導對抗氣候變化，警示地球的毀滅。
龐克時代的魏斯伍德，她的衣服常刻意驚世駭俗。但魏斯伍德能夠從龐克過渡到高級時裝而不失節奏，讓她的職業生涯得以延續，卻不致自打嘴巴。
「她一直在努力重塑時尚。她的作品挑釁而具有侵略性，在很大程度上根植於英國的模仿、反諷及諷刺傳統。對於自己的英國身份，她感到很自豪，卻仍對它加以嘲諷」，波頓說。
魏斯伍德是自學成才的，並未受過正規的時尚培訓。她告訴《美麗佳人》（Marie Claire）雜誌說，她在十多歲時便學會按圖版製作自己的衣服。她想在她第一家店銷售1950年代風格的衣服時，她在市場找到舊衣，將其拆解，以了解剪裁與結構。
性手槍樂團貝斯手格倫．馬特洛克在給美聯社的一份聲明中，稱魏斯伍德是「一位個性鮮明、有幹勁、專心致志、才華洋溢的女士」。他說他感到榮幸，「在70年代中期與她密切來往，見證了龐克的誕生，以及它在全球創造的浪潮，這些浪潮至今仍在全球憤青、潮男潮女和覺青身上回聲、迴響」。
魏斯伍德於1981年在她第一場時裝秀上展出了她的「海盜」系列，從而進入一種全新的設計類型。這一突破被認為將魏斯伍德帶向了更傳統的方向，顯示她將英國歷史上的設計融入現代服裝的興趣。
這也是魏斯伍德與時尚界之間持續和解的重要一步。這位反叛者最終成為最著名的明星之一，以重新詮釋過去的華麗禮服而聞名，並經常從18世紀的繪畫中尋求靈感。
但她仍找到了驚世駭俗的方式：她1987年的自由女神像緊身胸衣令人印象深刻，被認為是「內衣外穿」潮流的開端。
（台北時報林俐凱編譯）
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