Fashion Bids Farewell to Vivienne Westwood at Southwark Cathedral in London
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LONDON — “When in doubt, dress up!”
That was one of Vivienne Westwood’s many mottos and the dress code for her elegant, candlelit memorial service that took place Thursday afternoon at Southwark Cathedral, on the edges of the bustling Borough Market in southeast London.
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Friends, acolytes and fellow designers including Marc Jacobs, Victoria Beckham, Paul Smith, Zandra Rhodes and Bella Freud took Westwood at her word, streaming into the Gothic cathedral in their finery to pay tribute to the pioneering designer and activist, who died Dec. 29 at age 81.
There was Stephen Jones wearing a floppy velvet crown, Westwood T-shirt and ’70s bondage trousers; Matty Bovan with eyeliner sketched across his face, just like Westwood used to wear it, and Helena Bonham Carter, dramatic in tartan and platforms, her multicolored hair piled high on her head.
“Maybe we should talk to the king about a having a national Vivienne Westwood day,” said the actress at the start of her brief and witty eulogy. She described the designer as a “true feminist” who was able to transform women on the outside, and the inside.
“The dresses do all the work for you,” said Bonham Carter, adding that she can put away a full English breakfast and a bacon roll and still look good in her slinky Westwood Cocotte dresses. “Even on a fat day, I feel like a woman. No diet required.”
Bonham Carter praised Westwood, who drew heavily on 18th-century costume, for giving her the chance to “wear a Fragonard” rather than see it stuck on the wall of a museum. Bonham Carter said the designs are so magical that she wouldn’t be surprised if they got up at night and danced with each other.
The service was a cultural feast, reflecting the passions and interests of the late designer. Westwood may be synonymous with punk and famous for plundering history for her sexy, swashbuckling designs, but her interests were broad and the learning never stopped.
Making clothes was something she enjoyed, and was excellent at, but it was clear from Thursday’s order of service that Westwood’s passion for fashion was eclipsed by her dedication to her family, her politics and a desire to right the world’s wrongs.
She campaigned for the environment, social justice, and for the freedom of her longtime friend Julian Assange, who remains in British prison and faces charges in the U.S. for publishing classified and diplomatic documents.
Assange was barred by British authorities from attending Westwood’s funeral last month in England’s Peak District (where the designer grew up), and from Thursday’s service, too.
Westwood was a lifelong learner who began her career as a primary school teacher and was a voracious reader until the end.
Her husband and design heir Andreas Kronthaler, whom she met while teaching fashion design at the Vienna School of Applied Art, said she spent her last months reading Chinese poetry.
In her later years she began writing her own poetry, converted to Taoism and persisted with her many activist campaigns. “She challenged everyone to do better by educating themselves” and standing up to injustice, said Westwood’s granddaughter Cora Corré.
Dressed in a dramatic black jacket with broad shoulders and Elizabethan swagger, Corré said her grandmother “remained true to her inner force, and believed that with sincerity of application, everything is achievable.”
Reading wasn’t Westwood’s only love. At the start of Thursday’s service, Arnfield Brass, a band from the Peak District, played songs ranging from “The Sound of Music” classic “Do-Re-Mi” to Miles Davis’ “Concierto de Aranguez” and Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
At one point the Australian musician Nick Cave played piano and sang “Into My Arms” while Maria Ladurner sang George Frideric Handel’s “How Beautiful Are the Feet” and Chrissie Hynde crooned “Raining in My Heart.”
Westwood herself added a light touch to the proceedings in a film made by her brother Gordon Swire called “My Sister Vivienne.”
In it, she talks about growing up in Derbyshire, “the most beautiful place in England,” her love of nature, a childhood spent skipping rope and singing songs with her girlfriends, and teenage years spent “drinking whisky,” dancing and kissing boys.
“By the time I was 18, I’d had about 200 boyfriends,” she says in the film. “But it was just snogging. Nothing more than that.”
The punk rebel — and owner of the Sex boutique — would emerge later.
“It was youth against age,” she says of the punk movement, adding that her antiestablishment views derived partly from the U.S. war in Vietnam. She was angry because “some of the people who caused the war were still in power. They wanted to exploit cheap labor in the area. We didn’t need these guys telling us what to do,” she says.
The clothes were a bonus. “Punk was so glamorous. You just looked incredible,” says the designer, who loved wearing her political statements on her sleeves (and T-shirt)s. “Wear a slogan, and that idea will spread,” she says.
During the service Westwood sprang to life in so many ways. Her younger son, Joseph Corré, said she left him specific instructions before she died. “She left us all long to-do lists. This was my mine: stop war, stop climate change, fight for human rights,” he said, stifling a laugh.
Guests, who also included Kate Moss, Tracey Emin, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Beth Ditto and Bob Geldof remembered her both as a fiery spirit and the queen of cool.
Rhodes said she marvels at how Westwood was able to be a designer and an activist simultaneously. “Somehow, she made it work. She managed to do it all,” said the designer.
Jones loved her but said “she wasn’t easy. I was terrified of her. We worked together and she changed my life. She made me think.”
Jacobs, who attended with Beckham and whose show earlier this month was a tribute to Westwood, said that when he was a teenager going clubbing “only the coolest kids wore Vivienne Westwood — it wasn’t even available in the U.S. at the time. If you wore it, you were part of a very elite group. Her clothes just resonate with young people. It’s hard to describe that energy.”
Ellen von Unwerth said she always loved photographing Westwood’s clothes. “They were sexy and elegant with hoop skirts and stockings, and a little bit kinky, too. The girls had so much fun on her runway — I always wanted to shoot everything, and wear it, too, of course.”
— With contributions from Violet Goldstone
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