Sketches from '30 Years of Japanese Fashion' - Exhibition at the Barbican ArtGallery in London

That 'Non-Conformatist' Malarky

Once upon a time there was a young primary school teacher who lived with her husband and child in Harrow. Day after day she would teach children how to read and write, add and draw and then she would come home and cook dinner for her husband, Derek. The two would chat about their days and feed their young son. They would tuck him in and go to bed just as the ten ‘o’ clock news ended and turn off their bedside lamps at the same time; and in the mornings the cycle would simply begin again. She never questioned her life, she was happy, she had everything she’d ever dreamed of. A nice house, a nice job, a nice husband and the beginnings of a nice family; her life was a common fairytale.

Then one day she met the dark prince. He was tall, handsome, tattooed, pierced and totally wrong for her. Her type was conservative, caring men with stable jobs at banks or something to that effect; she should not have fallen for the guy with leather trousers and wild hair.

Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren were an awkward item, a myth, ‘The Primary School Teacher and The Punk.’ It sounds like one of those dating fairytales; like the one about the one night stand that turned into a lifetime, or the guy who couldn’t commit suddenly turning up at your doorstep with a ring and a wedding planner.

Vivienne Westwood as we know her emerged from the chrysalis of her mousy primary-school teacher job, leaving her quiet life in Harrow behind her she moved to Clapham with Malcolm and set up shop on Kings Road selling leather fetish gear as casual apparel. “If we could get the girls on the corner and outside the bank to wear dog-collars it would mean something.” The response from the rest of the world was disgust, parents disowned their punk children; people actually protested against it, Westwood was condemned by Vogue and the government for being ‘poisonous to society; inciting anarchy through offensive clothing.’

Back in time fifty years and the exact same thing was happening to another woman. Gabrielle, then in her late 30s, had just closed a painful chapter in her life. After years of happiness the one man she loved evaporated from her life, engulfed in the twisted metal and burnt rubber of a car accident outside Paris, where they had lived together. Weeks later, when she had finally finished mourning the last nine years, she reviewed her life. She was the aristocratic mistress to the heir of a fortune in the textile industry, the man had never been faithful–even marrying another woman–and now he was dead. She still had her Millinary shop, but he had financed it – the outlook was bleak.

 A lesser woman would’ve given up and accepted a permanent state of shameful solitude, being unmarried in your 30s back then was considered detestably dishonourable. Gabrielle hated the idea that everything that she had gone through might simply be overlooked by everyone she met. She hated the fact that people simply assumed that her life would wilt into a state of recluse and thought that the most dignified way for her to exist henceforth would be as a ashamed spinster. It was here, in this sinking situation, that she decided to swim; Gabrielle became Coco Chanel.

Few people ever get the chance to be inspirations, but both Vivienne Westwood and Chanel chose to lead by example, they didn’t want to disappear into nothingness. Chanel could’ve sold her shop and moved to Normandy to live as a hermitic unmarried wretch, secluded by society for her marital status and died a scary old lady. Westwood could’ve simply sat tight in her job as a teacher, she would hold PTA meetings, break up fights on the playground and mark spelling books until she keeled over. They chose not to, They chose to rise above mediocrity and became two of the most powerful forces in fashion.

Chanel made clothes that didn't hurt or require a team of people to tie you into them, she cut self harm out of fashion entirely; favoring the elegance of drapery instead of the life-threatening pitfalls of corsetry. Chanel's designs joined the tidal wave social movement of the time edging ever closer to sex equality; no longer did you  have to be in pain in order to be attractive, you could dance, get drunk and have sex without incurring injury or damaging their over-done clothes, all of a sudden women could just dress as comfortable as they favoured and look amazing. Men didn’t like this so much. Women, like their clothes, were getting ‘looser.’ They were starting to realise that they possessed the same integrity that men boasted, they were learning how to use their sexual power to their advantage, they were looking at their lives objectively; women were choosing to get married later, not to have children yet, to get divorces, to have real careers of their own. A woman was no longer a baby-machine; she was a force to be reckoned with - she wore a suit to work.

Where Chanel had fundamentally changed the landscape of women in society; Westwood created the look of an entirely new subculture: Punk. But spearheading social movements, as history has illustrated, is no mean feat, they needed a catalyst, something to get the word out - a vehicle to recruit new followers. Music. McLaren set up rock bands to transmit their style around the globe; most famously, ‘The Sex Pistols.’

It was an ingenious and groundbreaking business model, combining fashion and music. In hindsight there really was no way that they wouldn’t have reached their level of success. Every time Vivienne came out with a new ‘look’ Malcolm would set up a band to support their image, people would follow the band and find that Vivienne Westwood designed the look of every new act in the Punk World and every punk would want to look like them... the scheme always worked flawlessly, But what made it even better was that it wasn’t a business plan, it was simply the way they operated, and it worked beautifully for them.

Vivienne Westwood’s use of tartan will probably last as one of her most recognised marks on the entire punk world, no one punk can call themselves as such until they are privy to a pair of tight red tartan trousers. She was the person who brought tartan into that world; that was all her, and it’s weird to think that one particular person could have that much of an effect on an entire genre of social outcast but she did, she made it

These two designers carry with them two different eras, Chanel brought sexual and social emancipation to women through respecting the female form–instead of butchering it with corsets–and Westwood emancipated the kids who didn’t want to look like everyone else, those who were looking for a look that was all their own and that they could fully express themselves with. She gave them weird clothes that freed them of conformatism and gave them something that was fundamentally lacking in society at the time, individual identity.

Chanel passed away in august 1971, she had been the fountain of style and taste for sixty years. She died at the age of 87 having worked right up to the last day. Two months later, Vivienne and her dark prince opened ‘SEX,’ their very first boutique together at 430 King’s Road.