Vivienne Westwood Quotes

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.

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

I do think if you aim for quality, it's not so much about consumerism. The idea is 'Buy less, choose well, make it last.'

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

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

There is a real connection between culture and climate change. We all have a part to play and if you engage with life, you will get a new set of values, get off the consumer treadmill, and start to think, and it is these great thinkers who will rescue the planet.

I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring. To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I've got books I need to read. More people should read books. It's the most concentrated experience you can have. You know, all those incredible geniuses concentrated their lifetimes' experiences in books. It's much better than chattering away to somebody who's never read anything and knows nothing at all.

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

I don't care if you get up in the morning and don't wash, don't put any make-up on, don't do your hair, even, but you have to have clothes if you want to look different.

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.

And it's absolutely great, when everything comes together with the hair, the dresses and the makeup and the models and the music and the presentation. I can't get over these girls. They look wonderful. But by the time we finish with them, they look like they came from another planet. And I just think it's great.

Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth's treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply.

I like the Chinese proverb: If a horse is yours, it will always come back!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What's happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It's going to make the situation worse.

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

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.

Wear a towel instead of a coat, it’s very chic. Or your husband’s boxer shorts with a belt, or something from your grandmother. It’s all about do-it-yourself at the moment.

I may be a rebel, but I am not an outsider.

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 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.

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.

I very rarely watch my own fashion shows, but the makeup for my Fall 2011 show was just brilliant.

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.

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

I am always trying to find fabrics that are more friendly to the environment - working with Virgin Atlantic, they managed to research into this and find more eco fabrics.

It's better to look important than sexy.

I didn't want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn't like it. I always wanted to do other things.

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.

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.

If we didn't have the Chinese buying things, we'd be on the floor.

There are many war refugees and three times as many climate refugees. All of them are people who can no longer live where they were born. I hope we face reality in time to save ourselves. We will all be migrants soon.

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.

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

Prince Charles is definitely my hero; he uses his position to do only good in this world.

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.

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

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.

The migrants are not a temporary crisis. The crisis is mounting.