Vivienne Westwood Quotes

I didn't know how a working-class girl like me could possibly make a living in the art world

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

I've got a terrible memory; it's probably because I'm always concentrating on what I'm doing now.

The sexiest people are thinkers.

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

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

The only reason I'm in fashion is to destroy the word conformity.

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.

I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring.

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.

Sometimes you need to transport your idea to an empty landscape and then populate it with fantastic looking people.

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.

There is so much that people take for granted.

Home, more than anything, means warmth and bed.

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.

The best fashion accessory is a book.

I try to concentrate on quality clothing and accessories that are worth having, and to get my people to take fewer trips by air and stay longer each time they travel. It’s more human, especially if they take time to visit an art gallery while there.

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.

A relationship should be based on friendship. I remember somebody telling me that when I was younger and I just thought, you know, stupid people, with that rubbish. But now I see that that is so important.

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.

I’m not terribly interested in beauty. What touches me is someone who understands herself.

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.

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

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

Within one generation, Los Angeles will be uninhabitable if people don’t do something about it. The world is going to get smaller and be uninhabitable and impossible to live in.

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

My clothes are very popular in Japan.

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

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 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.

I have certain signatures, certain cutting principles. It could be a raw-edged seam; it could be leaving the lining of sheepskin exposed so it's not perfectly finished. I invent new ways to do it, but the end goal is always the same.

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

When I'm in the street, the only people I notice are usually at least 70 years old, because they look really stylish.

Britishness is just a way of putting things together and a certain don't care attitude about clothes. You don't care, you just do it and it looks great.

In the morning, I practice 15 minutes of yoga.

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.

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 do have reasons for what I do. I am a very political person, and I really think if you put these clothes on, you will look like a force to be reckoned with.

I talk to fashion designers and say I want some money to save the rainforest, and they say, 'Oh, I agree with you completely Vivienne. Yes, climate change, it's definitely happening,' but they don't feel that they can do anything about it; they don't even think 'Well let's stop it!'

If you dress up, it helps your personality to emerge - if you choose well.

Fasion is about eventually becoming naked.

I just think people should invest in the world. Don't invest in fashion, but invest in the world.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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