Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood dead at 81

British designer Vivienne Westwood, acknowledged as fashion’s “high priestess of punk,” died on Thursday, December 29 at the age of 81.

Westwood’s namesake vogue home tweeted that she passed away “peacefully and surrounded by her household, in Clapham, South London.”

The brand also shared the unhappy information on Instagram, crafting, “Vivienne ongoing to do the points she loved, up until finally the previous minute, planning, doing work on her artwork, composing her reserve, and switching the environment for the better. She led an astounding everyday living. Her innovation and affect about the final 60 a long time has been immense and will carry on into the future.”

Westwood’s many years-extensive design and style profession commenced in the 1970s — shortly immediately after she fulfilled Malcom McLaren, who would go on to regulate the Intercourse Pistols. Alongside one another, Westwood and McLaren opened their famed Intercourse boutique on King’s Street in London, which bought provocative fetish-inspired fashions befitting its identify (of which it’d cycle as a result of quite a few above the decades).

“It changed the way persons looked. I was messianic about punk, viewing if just one could set a spoke in the program in some way. I recognized there was no subversion without strategies. It is not sufficient to want to destroy almost everything,” Westwood once reported of her perform.

She and McLaren commenced exhibiting their have collections in the early 1980s, blending the edgy punk references they understood and liked with factors of new romanticism her now-signature corsets and the “mini-crini,” a small and hot variation of the Victorian crinoline, exemplified this aesthetic.

And Westwood’s conduct was as subversive as her model in 1992, she arrived at Buckingham Palace to get an an Get of the British Empire (OBE) from the Queen, twirled for the cameras — and revealed she was heading commando beneath her seemingly conservative skirt suit.

While certainly eye-catching, Westwood’s creations — which have ranged from T-shirts printed with bare breasts to pirate hats — have occasionally sacrificed practicality for effects. Throughout her legendary 1993 “Anglomania” display, she sent out styles wearing system heels so perilously substantial, Naomi Campbell famously took a tumble proper on the runway.

In a lot more new many years, Westwood’s draped and corseted types have grow to be favorites of stars such as Kim Kardashian, Bella Hadid, Dua Lipa, Hailey Baldwin and Olivia Rodrigo, to identify but a handful of.

When Dita Von Teese married Marilyn Manson in 2006, she did so dressed in purple Westwood Princess Eugenie donned a few distinct seems by the designer for Kate Middleton and Prince William’s royal marriage ceremony in 2011.

A Vivienne Westwood marriage ceremony gown was famously featured in the 2008 “Sex and the City” motion picture, with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw deciding upon a voluminous strapless gown by the designer for her marriage to Chris Noth’s Mr. Huge — and while not all viewers loved the bridal design and style, perhaps that was the point.

“The only explanation I am in style is to demolish the word ‘conformity’,” the flame-haired designer wrote in her 2014 biography. “Nothing is intriguing to me unless it’s received that factor.”