VIVIENNE WESTWOOD , the great brand handbag designer that changed the world
How VIVIENNE WESTWOOD , the great brand handbag designer that changed the world
COMELY HANDBAG
Still designing in her seventies, Vivienne Westwood will forever be associated with the beginnings of punk. With her then husband Malcolm Mclaren, she set up her shop Let it Rock in 1971, at the wrong end of London’s King’s Road. It became the epicentre for the scene, with Westwood’s designs- fashion handbag for the young
People. With obscene slogans and bondage trousers adopted as the uniform.
Westwood moved on swiftly to high fashion bag. Her Paris debut was with the Buffalo Girls collection of 1982. While its Oliver Twist-style mannerisms contrasted wildly with the work of other designers of the time, the collection gained recognition on an international stage. Her talent for mixing tailoring skills with a desire to push boundaries was plain to see. Other notable innovations have included the mini-crini, which turned the Victorian crinoline into a Collection of Canvas and the Rocking Horse shoe the wooden platforms first introduced in 1985.
Westwood received an OBE in 1992, famously collecting it in an Eve costume with strategically placed fig leaf and is approaching nation treasure territory in Britain. But the friction between tradition and punk rock radicalism is part of the Westwood DNA. Now a Dame, she continues to rock the boat in collections designed with her husband, Andreas Kronthaler.