Costume drama from the wild Westwood
When you're invited to an evening with Vivienne Westwood, undisputed Queen of British fashion, conventional rules of dress go right out of the window.
What to wear to meet the Queen? Nothing too smart; nothing too boring. Certainly not a sober black suit.
Such will be the quandary Sheffield's in-crowd face today as they rake through their wardrobes for something edgier, quirkier. Something the woman who kicked fashion right up the backside won't find too insipid.
The high priestess of punk is in the city today to celebrate the arrival of an exhibition chronicling her career at the Millennium Galleries.
It's a coup for Sheffield - the exhibition, homed for the last four years at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, is on an international tour - and this is its only UK stopover.
Brilliant, flamboyant and eternally eccentric, Vivienne is a cross between national treasure, enigma and living legend.
Unusually in the world of high fashion, people are as fascinated with her as they are of her distinctive designs.
Maybe it's because the 67-year-old from Tintwistle, the little village many Sheffielders have passed through on their way to Manchester, is as outspoken, as unpredictable and as original (some would say bonkers) as her clothes... Yet both have so much more substance to them than they outwardly appear.
The sometimes redhead, occasional peroxide blonde who favours the more outrageous elements of her collections wasn't always so extrovert. Her father worked in the Wall's sausage factory and her mother was a greengrocer's assistant until they moved to Harrow to run a post office. Vivienne went to teacher training college, married a factory apprentice and became a primary school teacher. All very suburban.
It was Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, who famously changed the course of her life - and the fashion world.
Yet despite breaking so many style boundaries since some of her ideas about fashion are traditional; she's a believer in always dressing to the nines. And she thinks we're all consumers gone mad.
"I'd like people to stop all this buying and buying and buying," she has said.
There's this idea that somehow you've got to keep changing things, and as often as possible. Maybe if people just decided not to buy anything for a while, they'd get a chance to think about what they really liked.
"There's something really awful about the way people dress now. Everyone wants to look neutral.
"Why do people think that if you don't dress up, others will appreciate your beauty more – that style will somehow emanate from you? It's rubbish. If you dress up it helps your personality to emerge."
Why do we love Vivienne? Because she says exactly what she thinks. And also because at the same time she's gentle, sweet and motherly. She's your brilliant, dotty, fascinating, favourite aunt - with her underwear on the outside.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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