[Intro]

The response from her was consecutively negative. There were “No” and “No”, one after another, at least for my first two questions.

At the very beginning of our conversation, I tried to introduce myself that our publication was a lifestyle magazine distributed freely with the most renowned financial newspaper in Hong Kong, “Something comparable with <How to Spend It> that goes with <Financial Times> in your country, perhaps you could have a more concreted concept on it?” I proudly pronounced.

“<How to Spend It>? I’ve never heard of it!” She said.

To get away with the slightly uncomfortable air, I thrown out another question instead of, and which I thought was quite a smart one. “After 40 years in fashion, if you were to choose all over again, would it be the same?”

“I didn’t choose fashion!” She said.

Lucky that Vivienne went on to say, “My first 20 years in fashion was kind of painful. I treated fashion like a job, never really had a passion in it, only doing it because I can and for a living. But then my husband at the time told me that if I didn’t like what I do as a living, I will never be happy! Then I realized and have put all my effort in fashion ever since. Now I just cannot stop and even working on weekends!”

For Dame Vivienne Westwood, fashion makes no difference as passion which is just like something you are doing everyday, as natural as breathing. “You will never get tired because it is what makes you stay young. Forever young! Forever the Dame!”

After the opening of the “Vivienne Westwood : A Life in Fashion” , a retrospective exhibition on her achievement in fashion, at the ArtisTree, Cornwall House of Taikoo Place (until 31st of Jan..2009), Vivienne talked to 《LifeStyle Journal》about fashion, life and values.

[On Fashion]

LJ: How do you define fashion?
VW: Fashion wouldn’t have been my choice of job. I did it because I could and you have to earn your living. The reason I continued was because I was full of ideas and I wanted to build on those ideas. In the course of my career, I am constantly inundated with people asking me things. People are sometimes more concerned with my opinions than in looking at my clothes and there is a reason for that. I am a relatively small and independent company. I do not have businessmen telling me what to do. I do not blanket advertise. What happens is that I do have respect from people that see that my clothes are real and not just hype. So, time has been on my side and I have a lot of credibility at this stage. The honest truth is that I try to communicate what I think. I do not see myself as any sort of star or public property. If you feel that you have anything to say that may help, then you appreciate having the platform to say it.
With fashion, I am the judge of it – only me. And I know that if I am happy with something, then someone else will want to wear it. As for the role of fashion in the future - we are driven forward by the past. The future doesn’t even exist. I cannot predict what people will be wearing in the next decade; I tend not to follow fashion trends as such. The important thing is to look at what is being presented today; it is futile to always be looking for the next thing without recognising that value of what we already have. People are so busy keeping up with the times that they miss everything for the sake of wanting to know what is coming next. It is true that in order for our imagination to function, we should try to understand what human beings have achieved in the past and compare it with nowadays. Then we may see the connection between cause and effect and thereby glean what the future might be.

LJ: Can you share with us your first fashion moment?
VW: I never had any formal fashion training, but I did always make my own clothes, teaching myself from commercial patterns. Then, when I opened ‘Let it Rock’ with Malcolm Mclaren in 1970, we wanted to do fifties clothes. We found old clothes in markets, some of which we sold because they were virtually new, and some which we took apart to get the cut. No doubt it is a very inefficient way of making clothes, but that is how people always worked in the past.
The fact that I started out having direct access to the public has been fundamental in allowing me to develop as a designer, because I have always had enough customers who have bought what I liked. As a result, I have been able to build up my technique. By technique I mean the manipulation of materials and how those materials give expression to the body.

LJ: What makes you remain in fashion?
VW: I’m a fashion designer. The greatest thing about my job is that I get to wear really great clothes. I am the centre of my look. I am aware that people are interested in me because of what I do. The important thing in my life is that I want to understand the world I live in. Although fashion is a part of that, I exercise my brain in many other ways. I think to dress well in an age of conformity where everyone looks so poor and sad is culturally very important – clothes should help, not hide personal expression and Culture is an expression of values of a society and this has enormous political influence.
My clothes are uncompromising in the sense that they are what they are and are not trying to sell themselves to you. If you want them they make you incredibly strong. But they are not asking you to want them – you have to decide, ‘yes that’s what I am going to have’ and when you wear them they say about you, ‘I’m something to be reckoned with – take it or leave it’. They allow you to project your personality, and are quite theatrical in the sense that they are real clothes, well designed, but they give you a chance to express yourself. They are also inviting – people respond to them and want to come and talk to you. The added bonus is, you are not going to be bothered by conservative types coming up to you, because they won’t. What I think my clothes give people is the power to make them feel sexy- after all they are very feminine. But what is even more important is that they talk about the body in a way that makes you stand out. There is a form to it all, a relation between you and what you are wearing that is terribly interestingly; you are doing something that you have never seen done before, and nobody else is wearing anything quite like it. What I think they can do for you is to make you look and feel important. They give you clout.

LJ: How do you compare the fashion today and those in the past?
VW: In fashion, I do not like revolutions. Eventually people buy clothes in order to wear them. That is why in spite of the designers efforts or any revolutions, the traditions in fashion should be taken into account. And one cannot neglect traditions completely.
The prevailing trend in the twentieth century has been minimalism. In the 1920s this might have seemed like a good idea but it was hardly a good idea, having come to a dead end, to repeat that dead end from 1960 until now. However, it may be impossible to rid ourselves of it even though nobody except businessmen want it. It is being dictated to us by the very nature of mass manufacture. I have not let my work be dictated by the limitations of technology and through innovation pattern cutting, I have used mass manufacture to produce a couture look. But I am just one of a possible five people doing this. You may all be bored to death with minimalism but soon you’ll be stuck with it forever and ever. Fashion today suffers from the over standardization of a cut and this is the area from which I have gained most in researching the past. I am trying to promote more formality and more discrimination and it may just be this that makes me avant-garde.

LJ: After 40 years in fashion, what is your most memorable thing? What did you learn over the past years?
VW: I am fortunate that after 34 years, I am still entirely independent. I own my own company, do not form part of one of those 'big groups' and have never had businessmen telling me what to make - and my business is healthy and thriving. I am still faithful to the same political motives as I was before, however these days you have to be far more subtle to get an effect. I think to be really subversive today you must try and uphold standards of quality and taste and to give people the chance to put something together that really creates an impression. Now my clothes are much more anti-establishment than ever before. Establishment is greyishness. "Let it all be as it is at the moment. I am fine as I am. I like to look like everybody else." Designing my clothes, I offer people the choice, and there is no more strong blasting activity than to offer people a choice.

LJ: Do you enjoy fame?
VW: I do think that I’m a very responsible person. In my own work you know- it has to be good. I don’t say my work gets better. I do say the solution, the result is always original. If you’re in a situation where you make money and you have time- which is not quite the case with me at this stage in my career- but what are you going to do with that time and that money? Money ought to be a way of buying yourself some time in order to do something and as Oscar Wilde said ‘I don’t waste money I spend it’. My career has given me a certain status and with that the fact that I’m not poor which facilitates getting around, meeting people and I’ve started to get things going which I hope will have a different significance and count for something. Fashion wouldn’t have been my choice of job. I did it because I could and you have to earn your living. The reason I continued was because I was full of ideas and I wanted to build on those ideas. In order to understand the world in which I live I thought that I had to try and make my work succeed as a business. On the human level, I’ve learnt about people including myself. I’ve learnt that even the smallest thing is never black or white and that people’s behaviour is always relative to the situation and that to create harmony and make things work you have to make the situation easy and attractive for that particular person and their character.

LJ: What is the worst experience in fashion world?
VW: Today people want to be rebellious but I don’t think there is much room for them today because the only true rebellion has to do with the ideas and there haven’t been any ideas in the 20th century. Today everything is dictated by mass manufacturing and advertising. My fashion isn’t for everybody – you have to have something very strong about your personality to want to wear my clothes. I feel if you’re providing some sort of choice of people, then you are doing something right.
Quality rather than quantity – business must work with creativity. Let us not forget that the Renaissance rediscovered the Greek mind and with it the understanding that civilization is defined by culture which is manifested in art.

[On Life]

LJ: What is the most rebellious thing you ever did?
VW: My rebellion was a gut reaction against the corrupt power maniacs, who daily become more powerful but it is only by thinking things through that one can have opinions worth mentioning. When I first started out, I was walking around in S&M clothes and no one else was, but these days those things are so mainstream I’m not sure where you get that edge of rebellion from. I don’t think you could ever create the same impact that punk rock fashion and S&M clothing had again. These days you have to be much subtler to get an effect. I think to be really subversive today you must try and uphold standards of quality and taste and to give people the chance to put something together that really creates an impression.

LJ: How to stay young?
VW: I cycle to work every day.

LJ： What do you treasure most at this moment?
VW: The Wallace collection is the best school in the whole country. There is more to learn from there, than anywhere.
My favorite painter is Titian and Velasquez and also Vermeer. I particularly love 17th century Dutch painting. The laughing cavalier, he’s marvelous. What I visit the Wallace for in particular is that, the 17th century. But then you have the three eighteenth century geniuses: Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard. All three of them, they say so much of that age. These decorative, pretty, pretty things, it was so easy for Boucher. Watteau, those Comedia Del’Arte, they have wonderful things in there. There are two fantastic Boucher as you come up the stairs, one is Apollo about to get into his chariot, surround by all the nymphs as he rises from the ocean. It’s absolutely fantastic. Boucher is really sentimental, but you can’t call him kitsch because he has such incredible facility. Playful but cynical somehow. He comes from an age that was very convenient for painters; all that mythology was part of a way of communicating in those days. To look at a painting is to enter a world. I love that 18th century version of the pagan world. It’s an absolute delight.

LJ: Any icon in your life?
VW: Yves Saint Laurent. He inspires me a lot. He loves fashion. He loves women. When I have problem designing, I always ask myself, what would Yves Saint Laurent do if he were me?

[On Values]

LJ: How would you value freedom?
VW: We live in an age where young people are flattered into believing that they can do anything that they want. It’s not true and you have to have an aptitude for something. A talent for it. The general syndrome regarding education is that people are trained not to think: that thinking is dangerous. I consider my fashion as giving people a choice in the age of conformity. I’d quite like to answer one of the criticisms that people give to me, that my manifesto is against the consumption of crap and obsessive consumption, but it’s not exactly against consumption per say - do you wish to go naked or do you wish to have clothes? All I’m saying is, I offer you a choice, if you can afford it. My maxim is always: Buy something great and don’t keep on buying. If you can afford it, make it last. It will last because you’ll always look great. I don’t feel very comfortable because that’s the sort of defense of my fashion. I’m not saying my fashion is so world conscious, but nevertheless, I’m not a hermit and I’m not a purist in telling people not to do things. I’m only telling them as a practice. I’m advocating people to pursue art and in the process they will cease to consume all the rubbish and start discriminating and I think you can do the same with clothes. I don’t want to go to great lengths about that because that’s up to people to buy my clothes or not. I’m not forcing it into their ears everyday - they are free to decide. To have a choice is political in an age of conformity. It allows people to discriminate and to choose and that’s what we’re about. Choosing, rather that just sucking up rubbish. That’s what the whole thing is about, but I think if you want to get something across, the idea of putting graphics in helps and I decided that I needed to do that at that stage. I’m not sure how much politics and fashion are linked together; I suspect they always have to be to some extent. Fashion historians will tell you about that, not me. I also say that one of the great things about doing fashion and having the credibility of my track record as an avant-garde designer of clothes is that somehow it has helped to give me a voice which I try to use and I’m really grateful for having this opportunity. I think a lot of people would love to have such an opportunity to voice their opinions because it’s getting more and more difficult these days to do that. So I try and make the most of it, and speak up, not only for me but also for those people who I know share my point of view. And that’s what I’m trying to do.

LJ: How would you define beauty?
VW: Ideal beauty is not what really interests me. I think that posture is the first asset; it comes from inside and has natural grace. Then what really touches me is the woman who is chic, she knows herself, doesn’t buy into mass marketing or publicity but takes the trouble to look good and shows off her best assets. This shows her to be generous yet discriminating and wishing to gain from her experience in life.
My customers are the best ambassadors for my clothes- when people discover them, they seem to have an edge. Honestly, although I’m very proud of my customers, I love to dress the supermodels. Glamour has a sense of archetype and I adore these archetypal beauties.

LJ: How would you define your legacy?
VW: I don’t think I can leave a legacy. But it would be nice if my practice could be carried on after me, i.e resistance to propaganda. Marketing could be misleading, always look deep into things beneath the surface.