The acclaimed biography of one of England’s great eccentrics and leading fashion designers.• 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.
Оглавление
Jane Mulvagh. Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD. AN UNFASHIONABLE LIFE. JANE MULVAGH
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE 2004 EDITION
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION
1 THE GIRL FROM THE SNAKE PASS
2 MEETING MALCOLM
3 PRANKSTER RETAILING
4 CARTWHEELING TO CASUALTY
5 WORLD’S END
6 ‘WITHOUT ITALY, I WOULDN’T EXIST’
7 RULE BRITANNIA!
8 WEAR YOUR BRAIN ON YOUR SLEEVE
9 THE WIFE OF BATH
10 NON-STOP DISTRACTIONS
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
REFERENCE NOTES. Chapter 1: The Girl from the Snake Pass
Chapter 2: Meeting Malcolm
Chapter 3: Prankster Retailing
Chapter 4: Cartwheeling to Casualty
Chapter 5: World’s End
Chapter 6: ‘Without Italy, I Wouldn’t Exist’
Chapter 7: Rule Britannia!
Chapter 8: Wear Your Brain on Your Sleeve
Chapter 9: The Wife of Bath
Chapter 10: Non-Stop Distractions
Conclusion
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PRAISE
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Отрывок из книги
To Anthony
Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life
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Released from the interference of Vivienne’s parents, McLaren was more inclined to visit Vivienne in north Wales. Here the countrywoman led the town-man and the boys on nature rambles up into the Clwydian hills, where McLaren would sit and sketch while Vivienne played with and watched her children. Away from the distractions of student life, McLaren felt at ease. But for Ben it was ‘an awful holiday’ as he began to realise the depth of McLaren’s antipathy towards him. McLaren had persuaded Vivienne that her first-born was retarded, and referred to him as ‘that snivelling little brat who’s always holding onto his mum’s apron strings’. McLaren also undermined Ben’s regard for his natural father, dismissing him as the offspring of a ‘no-hoper’: ‘Joseph’s part of me, and Ben’s part of someone she never had any respect for.’ Vivienne’s lack of confidence in her own genes and in her ability to nurture Ben demonstrated how fundamentally unsure she was about her talents and background.
Despite McLaren’s behaviour, Vivienne optimistically believed that by sharing a child, at least she had a hold over him. In fact her real hold on him was not his paternity of Joe, but her loyalty and the stable love, denied him in childhood, that she offered. She gradually weaned him from the suffocating hold of Grandmother Rose with steadfast and understanding love, and McLaren came to see that although she was more in love with him than he was with her, she did not pressurise him to make the commitment of marriage: ‘I don’t remember her ever discussing such matters.’ Despite her occasional outbursts of desperation, she gave him a free rein.
