Overview

The acclaimed biography of one of England’s great eccentrics and leading fashion designers, reissued in an updated edition to coincide with a major exhibition of Westwood’s work at the Victoria & Albert Museum. • For three decades, Vivienne Westwood has been Britain’s most consistently original, outrageous, eccentric and controversial designer. In that time she has evolved from an iconoclastic outsider to an internationally revered figure, with two British Designer of the Year awards, an OBE, her own successful fashion label and an unrivalled reputation for leading where other designers follow. • Her lifestyle could scarcely be in greater contrast to the opulence which surrounds other leading designers: until recently she lived in a modest council flat in South London, and she still travels around the capital by bicycle, dressed in her own flamboyant creations, with a plastic bag protecting her hair from the elements. How did an awkward girl from a conventional and provincial background become one of world fashion’s most influential and respected designers? How has she managed to remain true to her own idiosyncratic vision, refusing to conform to the fashion industry’s, and society’s, expectations? • Speaking to Westwood herself, her friends, lovers, colleagues, rivals, admirers and detractors, Jane Mulvagh has created a portrait as rich, distinctive and constantly surprising as her subject’s character and work.

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9780007177066

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Reviews

'The most compelling fashion biography for years. Honest, witty, perceptive, vivid. Each chapter is filled with insights' Suzy Menkes, International Herald Tribune 'A commanding study. Westwood's life is rendered with intensity and precision' Simon Garfield, Mail on Sunday 'A very good book: immaculately researched and full of original observations' Stephen Bayley, Observer 'Nobody could read this book and not understand why it is that Westwood continues to interest and infuriate in equal measure' Lucia van der Post, Financial Times

`The most compelling fashion biography for years. Honest, witty, perceptive, vivid. Each chapter is filled with insights' Suzy Menkes, International Herald Tribune`A commanding study. Westwood's life is rendered with intensity and precision' Simon Garfield, Mail on Sunday`A very good book: immaculately researched and full of original observations' Stephen Bayley, Observer`Nobody could read this book and not understand why it is that Westwood continues to interest and infuriate in equal measure' Lucia van der Post, Financial Times

Vivienne Westwood is almost as much of a British institution as the Queen and cups of tea - it's hard to imagine the newspapers without their shock photos of Our Viv in one of her outlandish designs. With all the sensationalist publicity, it's easy to forget that she is one of our great creative forces - an accomplished designer whose work has been internationally acclaimed. That she is an eccentric is in no doubt - despite her relative affluence, she still chooses to live in her modest one-bedroom council flat - and this makes her a biographer's dream. This is not an 'approved' biography, so Mulvagh has been free to show some of the more negative aspects of Westwood's character, yet it is overall a favourable portrait of an extraordinary woman who transformed herself from a working-class primary school teacher into one of the punk era's prime movers, and who now rubs shoulders with the world's richest and most beautiful people. Exhaustive and compulsive. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Jane Mulvagh is a fashion historian, journalist, columnist on the Financial Times, author of The Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion (Viking) and Costume Jewelry in Vogue (Thames and Hudson). She has known Vivienne Westwood for over fifteen years.

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