Scene: a hotel room in New York, one spring morning in 2013. I’m staring at a photograph of a young soldier with the word TRUTH emblazoned underneath her tentative smile in white font and a red box like a Barbara Kruger, pinned to Vivienne Westwood’s “Climate Revolution” DIY top.
“It’s incredible no one knows who this is. You don’t know who she is?” Vivienne asks me in her soft Derbyshire lilt. She audibly gasps as I shake my head. “It’s amazing. Amazing. I’m here to try and do something about her.” The photograph, I quickly learn, is of whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
By Vivienne’s side—now and for more than 30 years of their colorful shared lives—stands her husband, Andreas Kronthaler, the dashing, tender artistic director of their fashion label. We discuss the Amazonian-wild-rubber dress they’ve designed for me to wear to the Met Gala tonight and Chico Mendes, the wild-rubber-tapping activist who lost his life fighting to protect the rainforest. Vivienne listens intently, as always, then shares her observations, gesticulating—palms out—for emphasis.
Later, Andreas calls from the doorway, “I’m going downstairs, Vivienne.” “You have to wait for me a minute,” she bats back, with a cheeky smile. She’s mid spiel, relaying with unstoppable passion Manning’s plight, her sea-colored eyes afire under the red waves she’s drawn over them. Her gaze pierces with a desperate appeal to truth. She’s been calling truths out to us all for decades.
Which is why, this April 2013 day, Vivienne has traveled to New York, accepting Vogue’s invitation to attend the punk-themed Met Gala despite the paradoxes implied. She and Andreas are here to bring messages to the widest possible audience. “We’re out for the cause!” Andreas urges me, playfully enacting how I might talk to the cameras about the rainforest.
Hours later, we’re on the red carpet for the Met Gala. Passing a swarm of lenses, Vivienne pivots every interviewer’s question to her accessory: “I’ve got some brilliant jewelry here,” she says to CNN, pointing to the soldier’s photo now pinned to her long pink silk coat. “I’m here to support Manning. That’s the most important thing I want to say.” It’s the only thing she says.
Fashion was always a vehicle for expression for Vivienne, who died in December 2022, age 81. What began in the 1970s with spiked hair, “rubberwear for the office,” and T-shirt slogans so provocative that she and her partner, Malcolm McLaren, were prosecuted under the 1959 Obscene Publications Act later morphed with further humor, zest, and creativity. She wore silk dresses that parodied the upper classes, cosplaying as Margaret Thatcher for the cover of Tatler in 1989; spread her 70-year-old naked body resplendent on a silk sofa like Manet’s Olympia for Juergen Teller; spun for the cameras when picking up her OBE while “glamorously” wearing no underwear; and in 2020 dressed as a yellow canary hanging in a cage outside Downing Street to protest Julian Assange’s extradition to the US. “Vivienne started off a punk and ended as a dame, without compromising an inch,” said Helena Bonham Carter at her memorial today.
