Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood was a conundrum. Softly spoken yet forthright, she straddled the worlds of fashion, politics, social justice and sartorial observation. Viewed globally as a quintessentially English figure, with an irreverent edge, she was a visionary who was obsessed with history and lived as though she was born in another century. She brought punk to the mainstream, was celebrated as a fashion designer through a long career and was a tireless and provocative activist for civil liberties and environmental causes. Vivienne Westwood: The Lives of a Renaissance Woman is the first biography of the fashion icon since her death in 2022; a product of meticulous research, exclusive interviews with those who knew Westwood best and the biographer's 40-year friendship with her subject. It offers an insider's view of a woman who was internationally famous but known well by very few, telling the story of how a working-class English country girl became an international icon and succeeded against all odds.