Paying exploitative wages to those making its clothes and encouraging eating disorders through its use of super-thin models are just two of the charges levelled against the fashion industry. So I’m pleased to see one design dynasty railing against the excesses of modern life and the establishment. Across four decades, punk’s original couturier, Vivienne Westwood, has ruffled feathers with her contrary creations and shameless stance. For the first time in nearly a decade, she showed at London Fashion Week in February. It was classic Westwood, as the models for her diffusion label, Red, stepped out in kilts, bodices, draped corsetry, and immaculate tailoring. Not that Dame Vivienne would allow any show of hers to descend into bland commercialism. Sensationally, one Red model paraded in “Guantanamo orange” knickers with a placard protesting about the rights of prisoners in the US gulag. And Westwood was just as inflammatory in TV interviews, damning parents for letting kids play with computers, comparing music to brain damage, and concluding, “We need a new ethic; It’s the only thing that will save us from disaster.”
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