Posts with tag vivienne westwood

Whatever opinions someone may have concerning the tireless animal rights organization PETA one thing is for certain, no one can ever say they don't try.

Much like her country women Kate Moss, designer Vivienne Westwood will also be getting her life story told through film.

Only Vivienne Westwood would come out wearing a headband with a statement against the very thing she's selling. The grand dame of fashion sported headwear that had the word "Branded," scrawled across her forehead during her show at Paris Fashion Week.

Traveling pop-up shop Little Black Dress debuted in Los Angeles this week. The sprawling boutique features clothing, jewelry, artwork, and even botanical and floral arrangements--all for a good cause.

Benefiting do-good organizations like Junior League and Dress for Success, Little Black Dress offers clothing from the likes of Kira Plastinina, La Rok and Vivienne Westwood. (Candle designer Dayna Decker even created a Swarovski crystal-encrusted collection exclusively for the temporary store.) After hours, Little Black Dress will hold philanthropic fashion events like "Vino and Vinyasa" and "Movie and a Makeover."

And if the Sunset Boulevard locale is far from home, not to worry. In 2009, Little Black Dress will make appearances in New York and Chicago, too.

Grand Dame Vivienne Westwood is impossibly cool. The orange-haired style maven, who brought punk style to the masses, protests all injustices in our society, and designs a mean tartan blazer, is prepping to takeover iTunes with her new album.

Aptly entitled Catwalk Breakdown, the British designer put together quite a funky mixtape, which includes everything from The New York Dolls' Personality Crises to Tchaikovsky's Sugar Plum Fair. On her journey into music, Westwood said: "My clothes always tell a story... And I choose the music accordingly. Sometimes the music can just be sexy, it can let you relax, look at the clothes, put people into a fantastic mood."

All those able to get an invite to the "exclusive" London Fashion Week event taking place at Selfridges today will be able to walk away with an enviable goodie bag as well as the rocking mixtape by Westwood.

[via Marie Claire UK]

Vivienne Westwood just presented her Anglomania collection during Berlin's Fashion Week. As usual, we were wow'ed by the Great Dame of fashion. There's no show like a Vivienne show!

What did your college or high school graduation gown look like? Was it black and plain, or a color? Or did you skip the ceremony to go have a beer? Okay, maybe that was just us, but those gowns are seriously unflattering, and we had no intention of wearing it around for a day and being photographed looking like we were wearing a garbage bag. No thank you.

Fortunately, for graduates of King's College in London, they will have something a little different -- graduation capes and hoods designed by Vivienne Westwood!

Yes, Vivienne Westwood does menswear too! She presented her Spring/Summer 2009 collection for men in Milan today.

Designers at little-known Australian shoe company Melissa have been given a gift that's better than anything money could buy: legendary punk designer Vivienne Westwood has collaborated with them on a new footwear range, which fuses elements of Westwood's trademark quirky style with an innovative style of shoe-making.

Fashion and music have gone hand and hand since as far back as we can remember.

Dame Vivienne Westwood helped usher in the punk style that is still very popular in the UK by dressing the Sex Pistols and Adam Ant; Jean Paul Gaultier outfitted Madonna in those now infamous cone-shaped bras for her world tours, and as of late, Gucci's Frida Giannini has been taped to design 20 different looks for Lenny Kravitz's upcoming 'Love Revolution' European tour.

You know, it's 2008. You wouldn't think I'd still be writing about this sort of thing, but unfortunately a model's race is still a big issue. This season of runway shows is coming to a close and the tallies are out -- most designers put no more than 0-2 African American or Asian models on the runway.

Jezebel has the full count but at the Ann Demeulemeester show her models were 100% Caucasian, John Paul Galliano had 52 models and of those he had one African American and one Asian. The winner of the season for most diverse casting was none other than Vivienne Westwood. Her totals came in at 2 Asian, 5 African American and 1 Latina out of 25 girls.

Vivienne is definitely one of my all time fave designers and seeing that her show was kinda sorta diverse just gives me another reason to love her. But, that really doesn't excuse the fact that even though she had more shades of the skin tone rainbow on her runway than anyone else, 8 girls out of 25 is still barely over 30%!

Tyra Banks, Iman, and Naomi Campbell have been some of the most wildly successful models of this day and age. Models don't have to be Caucasian in order to be a household name. C'mon designers, get with the times. We live in a Benetton world!

Browse the gallery to see some of the fierce and diverse models that rocked the runway this past season.

Although London Fashion Week doesn't normally receive quite as much attention as it's European counterparts, Milan Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week, it still manages to attract some big names. This year the infamous Dame Vivienne Westwood has returned to show her Red Label collection (more affordable than her Westwood brand), after a 9 year absence!

She was happy to be back, stating that London is a lower pressure atmosphere than what she's used to, "The best thing about being back in London was that I really had the time to work on the show. It wasn't like when you go to Paris and you just have to do it."

And the crowd was happy to have her back as well. Even the celebrities came out to show their support! Kelly Osbourne, Kimberly Stewart, Cuba Gooding Jr. (since when is he a fashion fan?) and Lily Allen were all there.

The Red Label collection was pretty awesome. In typical Vivienne style, the clothes transmitted lots of rock and roll attitude. Some of the themes from the show were masculinity (pin strips, and even drawn on mustaches on the models!), typical British fabrics (velvet and houndstooth), political statements (signs asking for fair treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay) and crazy hats (if that's what you could call some of the wraps and what not covering the models' heads). Some of the outfits were a teensy weensy bit over the top -- and by that I'm talking one piece, camel toe inducing suits with shiny purple leggings peaking out of the bottom. But there were also many wearable pieces.

I'll say no more, the clothes pretty much speak for themselves. Browse the gallery and enjoy the wackiness that is Vivienne Westwood!

Either you understand and appreciate the punk rock ways of Vivienne Westwood or you don't. Many people who see her magical mash-ups on the runway just don't get it. Well, shame on them because they are missing out some great fashions.

As I was digging through Vivienne Westwood's latest line of accessories last night I stumbled upon these boots. They immediately reminded me of Disney's Alice and Wonderland. The buckle on these boots (or are they shoes) gives them a whimsical quality to what before could be easily mistaken for some freaked out pair of fetish shoes.

With a pair of white tights and a poufy plaid mini skirt you could be ready for a tea party in Wonderland yourself. To see more shoes by Vivienne Westwood check out her website VivienneWestwood.com.

Usually when you hear a person complaining about contemporary art that person is either a failed artist or a politician. However, as Vivienne Westwood proved during her lecture at the Hay Festival in Wales, elected officials and wanna-be's aren't the only ones to ready to hate on the world's artistes.

In a statement more befitting William F. Buckley than the Sex Pistols' flame-haired muse, Westwood suggested that "in visual art, I don't believe that anything is happening at the moment."

She went on to challenge the belief that judgments in art should be objective, not subjective, and if an artist thinks that his or her personal insights are worthy of the label art, they are fooling themselves. "I can't just go off stage now and return as a dancer, as Aurora in the Sleeping Beauty. You've got to train, your feet have got to bleed. The aim of art is objectivity. It requires an incredible discipline," Westwood explained.

While I suppose that aesthetic theory could be an interesting subject for discussion, I can't say that I would want to spend an hour of my life listening to a fashion designer wax poetic about it, especially if she ends up evoking Aristotle and Pinocchio in the process. (In all fairness, I wouldn't want to listen to anyone talk about art theory for that long.)

That having been said, I can understand why Westwood said what she did -- these days, the word 'genius' gets tossed around as if it were as common as left-handedness.

Whenever someone mentions British designer Vivienne Westwood, the words Sex Pistols, punk music, drugs and sex will not be far behind. Back in the early 1970s, Westwood was romantically involved with Malcolm McLaren, the manager for the band the Sex Pistols.

In 1971, McLaren opened a shop called Let it Rock, which sold many of Westwood's wild, punk designs. The relationship between the avant garde designer and the world of rock was ultimately sealed when the Sex Pistols chose to wear outfits from Westwood's collection during their first few gigs.

From then on, Westwood's designs were synonymous with the culture of British punk -- fetish clothing, drugs, sex and the unfortunate fate of Sid and Nancy. It's guilt by association, perhaps, as Westwood claims that she is nothing like her reputation suggests. She told British Vogue: "I've got this reputation for being a bit of sex maniac and things like that, and I'm not. I love that Jean Shrimpton quote: 'Sex has never been high on my list of priorities'."

No way! Designers are just like us*!

*By 'us,' of course, I mean pretty much every woman I know.