Vivienne Westwood (born 1941) and the Postmodern Legacy of Punk Style

Mother of Punk

Vivienne Westwood is often cited as punk's creator, but the complex genesis of punk is also found in England's depressed economic and sociopolitical conditions of the mid-1970s. Punk was as much a youthful reaction against older generations, considered oppressive and outdated, as a product of the newly recognized and influential youth culture. Creative and entrepreneurial people, such as Westwood, often contribute to an aesthetic that brings a subcultural style to the forefront of fashion. However, it would be simplistic to claim, as many have, that Westwood and her one-time partner Malcolm McClaren were uniquely responsible for the visual construction of punk in the mid-1970s, though much of their work captured and commodified the energy and iconoclastic tendencies of the movement.³

The New York Effect

In the early 1970s, the socioeconomics of New York City were no better than London's. Local rock groups were reinventing music and style in protest against what had become perceived as the star-centered, showy, and elitist mentality of '60s super-groups such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. These local bands, such as the New York Dolls and performer Richard Hell, were breaking down barriers at the infamous proto-punk club, Max's. Hell was well known for his nihilistic lyrics and wearing of self-styled ripped T-shirts bearing slogans like "Please Kill Me." The original fanzine of the era, PUNK, was published in New York City and is credited with the first use of the term. Malcolm McLaren, Westwood's boyfriend and "partner in crime," was living in New York during this time and briefly managed the New York Dolls. According to punk lore, McLaren took this radical New York aesthetic back to London, where he opened the SEX clothing shop with Westwood and managed the Sex Pistols, creating a media frenzy and a prosperous symbiotic relationship between music and fashion that effectively set the tone of popular culture for decades to come.

Anarchy in the U.K.

Westwood, a former schoolteacher, was the seamstress in the SEX shop partnership with McLaren and made manifest their combined punk vision through her creations. Westwood designed both her and McLaren's clothing before they opened their first store, Let It Rock, in 1971. Let It Rock catered to the "Teddy Boy" subculture, which was a 1950s revival look. In 1972, they renamed the store Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, and changed the focus to emphasize the emergence of the Marlon Brando-influenced rocker/biker style that was popular at the time. In 1974, they again changed the name of the shop to reflect McLaren's new shock tactics, this time to SEX, where they sold S&M (sado-masochistic) inspired clothing, met the Sex Pistols, and added their punk line, Seditionaries,⁴ in 1976.⁵ SEX was the center of the punk fashion scene and many young punks hung out, worked, or bought clothes there when they could afford them. Shrewd entrepreneurs, Westwood and McLaren were instrumental in defining and marketing the punk look at the precise moment that it was taking the streets of London by storm.

Rotten, Vicious Fashion

Childhood friends Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious claim names that evoke the true essence of punk. The Sex Pistols, their short-lived and infamous band, changed the face of music and gave voice to a disenfranchised generation. The Sex Pistols were working-class, antagonistic, innovative teenagers turned "punk" before it had a name.⁶ The clothing popularized by the Sex Pistols could be seen as a reaction against, as well as the culmination of, a long line of proscribed postwar British subcultural styles, including mods, skinheads, rastas, and rudies.

The Sex Pistols needed a manager to guide them and McLaren and Westwood needed an outlet for their ideas, both fashionable and political. To this day, there is much debate about whether McLaren was the architect of punk ideology. A known Situationist,⁷ McLaren supposedly created the Sex Pistols solely as a marketing tool for the SEX shop, but singer Johnny Rotten disputes this, emphasizing that the band existed prior to the collaboration with Westwood and McClaren but were used as models for the ideal punk look through their stage clothes often supplied by SEX.⁸

Philosopher Jacques Derrida's concept of "deconstruction," a term used to describe the process of uncovering the multiplicity of meanings in text, has been used to analyze everything from modern art to architecture. As applied to fashion, deconstruction has come to imply a decoding of both meaning and designer intent, as well as a descriptive term for certain structural characteristics.

The punk look has come to be associated with clothing that has been destroyed, has been put back together, is inside out, is unfinished, or is deteriorating.¹⁰ Punk was an early manifestation of deconstructionist fashion, which is an important component of late twentieth-century postmodern style and continues to be seen in the work of contemporary fashion designers such as Rei Kawakubo and Martin Margiela.

"A Nightmare of Interchangeable Surfaces"¹¹

The definition of postmodern is elusive, but its connection to punk ideology and style appears intrinsic:

Many scholars see this incessant atavism, this self-referential bricolage, as precisely what defines the postmodern, a term frequently used to describe the designs of Vivienne Westwood and punk fashion in general. The do-it-yourself attitude of punk styling was a unique product of a particular sociocultural history after which, during the 1980s and '90s, global style continued to evolve along the same aesthetic trajectory. Other elements that have recently been associated with the postmodern mode include clothing and imagery that appear dirty, ripped, scarred, shocking, spectacular, cruel, traumatized, sick, or alienating¹³—all of these were qualities actively sought by Vivienne Westwood and the punks of the 1970s.

Postmodernism = No Future

Punk was both a product and a victim of late capitalism. As the most quickly digested of all previous youth subcultures, it came to fruition and fell victim to mass marketing in less than three years.¹⁴ Since then, punk has never entirely gone out of style. Soon after the Sex Pistols disbanded in 1978, one could see punks everywhere in London, the U.S., and elsewhere. One still sees flamboyant teenagers wearing bondage trousers and studded leather motorcycle jackets on streets such as St. Marks Place in New York City, where these garments are still sold in quantity. Punk has even taken more than one turn at being an inspiration for haute couture. In the twenty-first century, punk and hip-hop, another subcultural style born of strife, have been fused together into what has become the standard look for contemporary youth.

The Costume Institute's collection of Vivienne Westwood's early work pays homage to punk's influence and situates historically these authentic garments of a subcultural style that has few rivals in its continued influence on Western fashion's mavericks.