Vivienne Westwood Quotes

1. Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.

2. Feminists wish women to seem like men. They're not men.

3. I am attracted to people who make this effort in knowing what suits them - they are individual and stylish.

4. My clothes are very popular in Japan.

5. I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make - and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn't quite work.

6. It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity.

7. My son has followed fashion since he was a punk. He and I agree that fashion is about sex.

8. I was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle.

9. The muscular, athletic type is not representative of the human race, who are varied in their physique.

10. But, the thing is, since I always had my own little shop and direct access to the public, I've been able to build up a technique without marketing people ever telling me what the public wants.

11. But, having a perfume and license, in general, is a financial necessity. A designer must, to reap back the money spent on prototypes and all that sort of thing.

12. Even though it was the 70s, we found old stocks of clothes that had never been worn from the 50s and took them apart. I started to teach myself how to make clothes from that kind of formula.

13. I didn't do anything at the Queen, whom I admire.

14. However, because Britain is young and exciting, I did show my second line here once or twice.

15. I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

16. I think dress, hairstyle and make-up are the crucial factors in projecting an attractive persona and give one the chance to enhance one's best physical features.

17. I don't have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I'm left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

18. I was still interested in the youth rebellion but never-the-less I stopped being a victim. Stopped trying to attack the establishment realizing that it takes too much of your energy.

19. It is extremely difficult to say how long the process actually took to finally achieve my fragrance, Boudoir, because there was a lot of time waiting around for other people.

20. I think it's important to vote. 

21. The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

22. We based the look on rock 'n roll right from the beginning.

23. The young Japanese, especially, love to wear the latest thing and when they come to London they head for my shops as part of what they want to find in Britain.

24. We moved into the back, made it into a little 50s sitting room and started to sell the records. We had an immediate success. For one thing, these Teddy Boys were thrilled to buy the records.

25. We wanted to step off our island and add the color of the third world. We got gold cigarette paper and stuck it around our teeth. We really did look like pirates and dressed to look the part.

26. What changed our lives forever was when Malcolm had the idea to sell rock 'n roll records to trendy customers.

27. Fashion is about eventually becoming naked.

28. Malcolm and I were probably the straightest people on that scene.

29. When we were young I fell in love with Malcolm (McLaren). I thought he was beautiful and I still do. I thought he was a very charismatic, special and talented person. The thought of him dead is really something very sad.

30. We based the look on rock 'n' roll right from the beginning.

31. I was walking down the street in rubber negligées and high-heel stiletto shoes at a time when other people were wearing denim, flares and platforms. You felt very heroic. I knew I looked good.

32. We wanted to create the feeling of being inside a womb, but also in a sort of sex torture chamber.

33. I like to literally put women on a pedestal.

34. I think stamped-out clothing is just for clones and I think everybody looks terribly miserable.

35. Fashion is life-enhancing and I think it's a lovely, generous thing to do for other people.

36. If you ask me what I think people should be getting next season. I'll tell you what I'd like them to buy - nothing. I'd like people to stop buying and buying and buying. There's this idea that somehow you've got to keep changing things, and as often as possible. Maybe if people just decided not to buy anything for a while, they'd get a chance to think about what they wanted; what they really liked.

37. Why do people think that if you don't dress up, others will appreciate your beauty more - that style will somehow emanate from you?  It's rubbish.  If you dress up it helps your personality to emerge - if you choose well.

38. So many women don't seem to even understand what sexy means. Sexy is about looking powerful and important.

39. There's something really awful about the way people dress now. Everyone looks the same.  Everyone wants to look neutral.

40. I'm not trying to do something different, I'm trying to do the same thing but in a different way.

41. The young need discipline and a full bookcase.

42. All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.

43. I think it is terribly important to have opinions, and to think. We live in a world of action without thought.

44. My manifesto is saying, essentially, every time you learn something, you see something you understand, you are helping to change the world and you are a freedom fighter. Even if it just means looking a word up in the dictionary you didn't know before.

45. Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination and insight, things that have nothing to do with reason.

46. I thought Sex And The City was supposed to be about cutting-edge fashion and there was nothing remotely memorable or interesting about what I saw...I went to the premiere and left after ten minutes.

47. I would have loved to have dressed Kate Middleton but I have to wait until she catches up a bit somewhere with style.

48. If he didn't come home at night I wouldn't care...I've never been more secure about anybody in my life.

49. When I'm in the street, the only people I notice, are usually at least 70 years old, because they have style.

50. In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don't understand. (after losing a contract with Armani)

51. What a load of rubbish! (on her own son's "Celebrity Spawn" exhibition)

52. Wandering around the shelves (of a library) from Aldous Huxley to Flagellation, Coco Chanel to Tourette's Syndrome. (on her idea of happiness)

53. There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that's rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

54. Every time I hear that word, I cringe. Fun! I think it's disgusting; it's just running around. It's not my idea of pleasure.

55. Personally I'm not a feminist, as I can't stand puritans.

56. I'm anti-feminist. They don't see the wood for the trees and everything has to be viewed from this feminist point of view. I know women have suffered and I think it's great that people stand up for women's rights but the problem with feminists is that they somehow consider women to be superior beings. And in the end, they just want to be men anyway. They want to do men's work.

57. Nazism is politically embedded in our history and it is still there, spreading like an oil stain in a society that worships business.

58. It's better to look important than sexy.

What do you think of Vivienne Westwood's quotes?

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