Vivienne Westwood Quotations

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

There is so much that people take for granted.

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.

You've got to invest in the world, you've got to read, you've got to go to art galleries, you've got to find out the names of plants. You've got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We're amazing people.

Print some money and give it to us for the rain forests.

People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much.

When we started to do punk, we put all of these things together to create the look of an urban guerrilla - a rebel.

I've got a real sense of three-dimensional geometry. I can look at a flat piece of fabric and know that if I put a slit in it and make some fabric travel around a square, then when you lift it up it will drape in a certain way, and I can feel how that will happen.

I really don't like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they're horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They'd better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

It's true the punk fashion itself was iconographic: rips and dirt, safety pins, zips, slogans, and hairstyles. These motifs were so iconic in themselves - motifs of rebellion.

It's a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

There's nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.

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.

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

I didn't consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.

Liverpool people are famous for liking clothes and fashion; they are very social and lively people, and we know that they like clothes.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It's always sexy, and it's always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

When I was a little girl you used to learn to sew all the holes in things, darning socks, but nobody mends things anymore.

My children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.

I'm very lucky. The public happens to like me. Maybe they like me because I use every opportunity to talk about injustice.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline... because you need to be alone to find out anything.

If you wear clothes that don't suit you, you're a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better.

I have a company, and I've got to think about that. I'm trying to do my best there, and that's a much harder task. We recycle as much as possible, and we conserve. But I've always been one to save everything - I even walk up stairs on the very inside or the very outside to not wear out the tread.

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

I'm not sure what I think about current fashion, though. A few years ago, I would have said it's really, really bad and you hardly ever see anybody looking good. There must be some very good designers in the world.

We are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much.

I think that feminists have definitely underestimated the role that women have had historically. I think I would be insecure if I were to be a man; there's so much pressure on you.

I've always felt heroic about my life... As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn't think that was the case at all. My parents didn't treat me as a girl.

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.

I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could. Advertising.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

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

Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it's popular, it's not culture.

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.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

I always tried to do things by example, even though I was not a very good mother regarding routines and family life.

The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas.

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

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn't have anything. It's influenced the way I look at the world.

Fashion has become so whatever. I don't think there are any stones left to unturn.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

I am in my own head most of the time.

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.

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

Buy less. Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity. Everybody's buying far too many clothes.

What I'm always trying to say to the consumer is: buy less, choose well, make it last.

I love designing at the moment, I'm so happy with my work.

In history people dressed much better than we do today.

When I first saw a picture of the crucifixion, I lost respect for my parents. I suddenly realised that this is what the adult world is like - full of cruelty and hypocrisy.

I'm frugal. I'm not a very acquisitive woman. I never waste food. If you prepare your own food, you engage with the world, it tastes alive. It tastes good.

The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody's interested in somebody who's just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing - there is no latest thing. It's all rubbish.

Every time I have to look up a word in the dictionary, I'm delighted.

I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn't realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left.

I do think we're an endangered species. But that we do have a plan to save the rainforest.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don't see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

I was a punk before it got its name. I had that hairstyle and purple lipstick.

I was so upset with what was going on in the world. I just couldn't stand the idea of being people tortured and that we even had such a thing as war. I hated the older generation, who had not done anything about it. Punk was a call-to-arms for me.

The main message of Climate Revolution is that climate change is caused by the rotten financial system we've got, designed to create poverty and rip off any profits for a small amount of rich people. Meanwhile, it destroys the earth.

Don't just eat McDonald's, get something a bit better. Eat a salad. That's what fashion is. It's something that is a bit better.

We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.

I'm a fashion designer and people think, what do I know?

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

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

Home, more than anything, means warmth and bed.

I eat only vegetables and fruit, and to me it's the most aspirational diet because it's so easy. It's quite simple, the cooking I do.

My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I've got books I need to read.

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

I don't feel comfortable defending my clothes. But if you've got the money to afford them, then buy something from me. Just don't buy too much.

I don't have faith in young people any more. I don't waste time trying to communicate with them.

I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party.

I'm the proof - you can't throw away tradition.

More people should read books. It's the most concentrated experience you can have.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

I don't care how many beauty treatments you have, I don't care which bag you're carrying - you have to have a dress.

I wish you didn't have to design so often. Try to do quality and cut down on quantity. I think fashion is very, very important.

Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.

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

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

If you saw Queen Elizabeth it would be amazing, she came from another planet. She was so attractive in what she was wearing.

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

My clothes have always got a very strong dynamic rapport with the body - they are very body conscious, they help you to look glamorous, more hourglass, more woman.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

I have too much product, and I'm trying to rein it in and sell more of my main collection. I wish you didn't have to design so often; it would be good if you could keep on selling the same things for a few years and not have to do new things all the time.

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.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they're not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

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.

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.

The bravery shown by Azza Suleiman who dared to stand up for another woman who was being beaten, and paid a heavy price in doing so, is both awe-inspiring and humbling.

The best night of my life was watching the Japanese Noh theater. I've only seen it once, but even saying it now, I think, 'How can I ever have this experience again?' It was so mesmerizing, so complicated and so primordial; I could not believe it.

The main message we want to get out there is that climate change is caused by the rotten economic system.

If you're too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.

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

I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who's spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit.

I'll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin' hymns is a great thing to do.

I just use fashion as an excuse to talk about politics. Because I'm a fashion designer, it gives me a voice, which is really good.

I'd like to be the last person alive in the world! Yes, I'd like to know what happens.

Real art has been... what's the word? Kidnapped? No, that's not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.