Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Isabel Westwood is a British fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.

Vivienne believes that fashion is a combination and exchange of ideas between France and England; “On the English side we have tailoring and an easy charm, on the French side that solidity of design and proportion that comes from never being satisfied because something can always be done to make it better, more refined.”

She was inspired by the shock-value of punk—"seeing if one could put a spoke in the system". Westwood went on to open four shops in London, eventually expanding throughout the United Kingdom and the world, selling an increasingly varied range of merchandise, some of it linked to her many political causes such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, climate change and civil rights groups.