Vivienne Westwood Documentary

From a very young age, Vivienne's spacial inteligence allowed her to think in fields of volume, space, objects and designs. 

Her rebelious and anarchist spirit comes from a failed hope of living the american dream. Influenced by media image of how an ideal life of a housewife married to a corporate working man, her values have collapsed while meeting the harsh reality of the British government swaying further and further away from the democratic system. 

Vivienne, along with her future husband - Malcolm - decided to open a record store, which quickly turned into a clothing store, for the first time inspiring Westwood to start sewing her own clothes. She was living in a community, having the ability to express herself, adressing issues and tabu of the british society in the 70s, eg. stigma against sexual freedom and fetishwear, shouting out anarchist slogans and oposing capitalism. 

What I found the most interesting from the documentary was her response to a journalist, asking what a punk icon such as herself is doing in Paris, entering the world of bourgeoisie and capitalized fashion. Vivienne believed, that she did what was neccesary to make herself and her statements heard. I think its quite interesting to state that people of the working class - punks, anarchists, need to leave the core of their community behind just to be able to reach out to a larger, more influential audience. She had finally gained space to express herself and speak up, critisizing the british monarchy, capitalism, evoking discussions around sexuality and sexual identity. 

"You have to go where you have to go, not be underground, be in a place where you can get the spotlight" ~ Vivienne Westwood

I believe it was the way she played with traditional british fashion, reimagining it and upsetting the old fashion standards of masculinity and femininity that allowed her designs to pour into the mainstream. 

However, it seems like nowadays the essence of punk in Westwood's designs has been washed out by the unaware audience, often very wealthy people, who are refusing to dive deeper into what statements powered her creation, often take it as superficial status symbol, probably because of the visual infuence of historical fashion, taken from the societal elits from victorian times. That choice, although allowing Vivienne to reach a bigger audience, resulted in general misunderstanding of what punk is about.  

Westwood was a household - a very chaotic one. Vivienne at one point made a decision to drop the idea of chasing profit and expanding and stood her ground, persisting on only making clothes she actually liked. It was a drastic move, but a neccesery one, because she found her company slipping out of her control.  

I admire Westwood for her stubbornness. She was not afraid to make her statements come across, make sacrifices in order to maintain her vision and be absolutely devoted to her passion. It shows a true power in a world of competing fashion houses swaping and absorbing designers, creative directors, changing visions and  blindly chasing profit.