Vivienne Westwood in Twelve Pieces
Vivienne Westwood once said she was only interested in fashion because it gave her a way to talk about the world. Every one of her signature pieces carries an argument: about class, sex, history, power or the planet. Read them in order and you get something close to an autobiography.
Our complete guide to Vivienne Westwood tells the story of her life. Here we tell it through the objects instead: twelve designs, what they meant when they first appeared, and why they still matter.
1. The bondage suit (Seditionaries, 1976)
In 1976, Westwood and Malcolm McLaren renamed their King’s Road shop Seditionaries and filled it with clothes designed to frighten respectable Britain. The most famous was the bondage suit: black trousers with straps linking the knees, zips across the seat and a loincloth-like flap at the back.
What it meant: the straps restricted movement, a deliberate joke about a society that made young people feel trapped. It borrowed from fetishwear, military kit and workwear and turned them into a uniform for the Sex Pistols and their fans.
Why it lasts: almost every punk-inspired collection since, from the high street to the catwalk, owes something to this pair of trousers.
2. The God Save the Queen T-shirt (1977)
Released for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee year, this T-shirt used Jamie Reid’s artwork for the Sex Pistols single: the monarch’s portrait with a safety pin through her lip and her eyes and mouth covered by ransom-note lettering.
What it meant: it was less an attack on one woman than on an establishment that seemed indifferent to unemployment and decline. Wearing it in 1977 could get you thrown out of a pub or worse.
Why it lasts: it showed that a cheap cotton T-shirt could be one of the most powerful political objects in fashion. The slogan tee as protest starts here.
3. The Pirate shirt and boots (Pirates, Autumn/Winter 1981)
Westwood’s first catwalk show, staged in London in 1981, abandoned punk’s black for gold, orange and a now-famous squiggle print. Billowing shirts, loose breeches, sashes and slouchy pirate boots were cut from historical patterns, with sleeves set high and asymmetric.
What it meant: punk was over, and Westwood was moving from shocking people to studying them. Pirates were outsiders, adventurers and thieves, a perfect metaphor for a designer who raided history for ideas.
Why it lasts: it kick-started the New Romantic look and established Westwood’s method for the rest of her career: going to the archive and making the past look rebellious.
4. The bra worn on top (Buffalo, Autumn/Winter 1982)
For the collection often called Buffalo or Nostalgia of Mud, Westwood drew on Peruvian and Appalachian dress, layering sheepskin, oversized hats and muddy, earthy colours. Most memorably, she put satin bras over dresses and jackets.
What it meant: underwear as outerwear was a direct challenge to the idea that women’s bodies, and their support systems, should be hidden.
Why it lasts: the visible bra became a recurring trend for decades and remains a fixture on today’s runways, where lingerie dressing keeps returning.
5. The Keith Haring prints (Witches, Autumn/Winter 1983)
After a trip to New York, Westwood collaborated with the artist Keith Haring, printing his graffiti-like figures and symbols on oversized coats and knits. The collection, Witches, also introduced trainers with three tongues.
What it meant: it connected London’s fashion underground to New York’s street art and hip-hop scene, years before such crossovers became routine.
Why it lasts: artist collaborations are now a standard luxury strategy. Westwood was doing it when it still felt subversive.
6. The mini-crini (Spring/Summer 1985)
Westwood took the Victorian crinoline, the cage that held out enormous skirts, and shrank it into a short, bouncy, polka-dotted miniskirt. She combined two symbols of femininity from opposite ends of history, the nineteenth-century hoop and the 1960s mini.
What it meant: Westwood was arguing that historical dress was not oppressive in itself, and that women could reclaim its shapes for fun and seduction.
Why it lasts: the mini-crini anticipated the puffball skirts of the late 1980s and the volume-obsessed silhouettes that still appear on runways today.
7. The rocking-horse shoe (1985)
Introduced alongside the mini-crini, the rocking-horse shoe sat on a thick, curved wooden platform, inspired by Japanese geta and traditional ballet shoes, and tied with ribbons at the ankle. It made walking a slightly wobbly performance.
Why it lasts: it was one of the first designer shoes to be treated as a collectable art object, and the house has revived it many times. Its DNA runs through every statement platform since.
8. The orb (Harris Tweed, Autumn/Winter 1987)
Westwood’s logo is a royal orb, the symbol of monarchy, encircled by a ring like a planet’s. It became closely associated with her Harris Tweed collection of 1987, which celebrated traditional British cloth and the dress codes of the upper class, with tweed jackets, twinsets and tiny crowns.
What it meant: the orb captured her whole worldview. Tradition (the crown) meets the future (the satellite ring). The punk who mocked the monarchy was now borrowing its symbols, and parodying them at the same time.
Why it lasts: the orb is one of the most recognisable logos in fashion and has never lost its slightly mischievous edge.
9. The Portrait corset (Autumn/Winter 1990)
Westwood had been reworking the eighteenth-century corset since the late 1980s, cutting it in stretch fabrics so it could be worn as outerwear. For her Portrait collection, she printed a corset with a pastoral painting by the French Rococo artist François Boucher, turning the wearer’s torso into a piece of museum art.
What it meant: the corset, so often seen as a symbol of female oppression, became a choice and a source of presence. Westwood loved the way it lifted the bust and gave the wearer the posture of a portrait subject.
Why it lasts: the Westwood corset is now one of the most sought-after vintage pieces in fashion, and its influence is visible on red carpets and in the corset revival of recent years.
10. The tartan and the Super Elevated Gillie (Anglomania, Autumn/Winter 1993)
Anglomania was Westwood’s love letter to British tailoring and Scottish textiles. She worked with the Scottish mill Lochcarron to create her own tartans, including one named MacAndreas after her husband and creative partner, Andreas Kronthaler. Kilts, sharp jackets and full skirts in clashing plaids filled the runway.
The same show produced one of the most famous moments in catwalk history. Naomi Campbell, wearing a pair of Westwood’s towering Super Elevated Gillie platforms in blue mock-croc, lost her balance and fell, then laughed and carried on. The shoes are now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
What it meant: tartan, a symbol of clan loyalty, rebellion and later of British empire, became a fabric for questioning national identity. The fall showed that Westwood’s clothes demanded something from the wearer: confidence, risk and a sense of humour.
Why it lasts: Westwood tartan remains a cornerstone of the house, and the Gillie fall is still shared online every time a model stumbles.
11. The pearl choker
Westwood’s multi-strand pearl choker, fastened with a small orb, began as a punk-meets-aristocrat accessory, a cheeky nod to the pearls worn by the British upper classes. For decades, it was a cult item among fans.
Why it lasts: in the early 2020s, a new generation discovered the choker through social media, and it became one of the most wanted (and most copied) accessories in fashion. Its revival shows how Westwood’s designs keep finding new audiences who may never have heard of the Sex Pistols.
12. Carrie Bradshaw’s wedding dress (2008)
In the first Sex and the City film, Carrie Bradshaw tries on a dramatic Westwood bridal gown in ivory silk, with a sculpted bodice and enormous skirt, and Westwood later sends it to her as a gift. It became one of the most famous wedding dresses in cinema.
What it meant: the punk outsider had become a mainstream dream label. For many viewers, it was their first encounter with the name Vivienne Westwood.
Why it lasts: it opened Westwood up to a huge new audience and helped make her bridal line a lasting part of the business.
Bonus: the manifesto pieces
In her later years, Westwood’s most important designs were often her words. Her 2007 manifesto Active Resistance to Propaganda argued that culture and art were the antidote to mindless consumerism. In 2012, she unveiled her Climate Revolution campaign at the closing ceremony of the London Paralympics. Slogan T-shirts, banners and catwalk shows carried her message, summed up in her famous advice: buy less, choose well, make it last.
The contradiction was obvious, and she embraced it: a designer selling clothes while telling people to buy fewer of them. But she argued that if people did buy, they should buy something made to last a lifetime.
What the twelve pieces say together
History is raw material. From the pirate shirt to the corset, Westwood took historical dress and made it modern by changing its fabric, scale or context. She did not do nostalgia; she did argument.
Power can be borrowed and mocked. The orb, the pearls, the tartan and the tweed are all symbols of the British establishment. Westwood wore them with a raised eyebrow.
The body is a stage. Bras on top, corsets as outerwear, platforms you can barely walk in: Westwood’s clothes asked the wearer to perform, and to be seen.
Clothes should last. Many of these designs are decades old and still sell, still get copied and still look radical. That longevity is exactly the point she was making.
Vivienne Westwood died on 29 December 2022, at the age of 81. She left behind a house, a logo and a set of ideas. But perhaps most of all she left behind these objects, each one a small manifesto you can wear.
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