What Vivienne Westwood is known for
The hallowed name of British fashion — from punk provocateur to couture heights. Tartan, the orb logo, and irreverent luxury. An indelible mark on fashion history.
Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's shop at 430 King's Road — Let It Rock, then SEX, then Seditionaries — dressed the Sex Pistols and effectively wardrobe-designed punk itself: bondage trousers, safety pins, slogan tees as provocation. When Westwood pivoted to the catwalk with 1981's Pirate collection, she brought the insurrection with her and aimed it at history — corsets, crinolines and tartan re-cut as critique, the orb logo crowning it with mock-heritage.
The paradoxes were the point: the punk who adored the eighteenth century, the republican dame (DBE 2006) who wore her honors ironically, the fashion designer who told people to buy less. Climate activism consumed her later decades as fully as design.
She died in 2022; Andreas Kronthaler, her husband and decades-long co-designer, continues the house's couture line under his own byline. The mini-crini, the Anglomania tartans, the pearl orb chokers on every Gen-Z neck: the establishment's favorite anti-establishment, permanently.
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — Punk heritage and British couture
Made in England and Italy
More in London
- Alexander McQueen — London
- Augustinus Bader — London
- Budd Shirtmakers — London
- Burberry — London
- Cad & The Dandy — London
- Charles Tyrwhitt — London
- Drake's — London
- Emma Willis — London
Where next
- Eudon Choi — London
- Derek Rose — London
- MR PORTER — London
Hand-curated for ORBIS · no paid placement