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!'
— Vivienne Westwood
I don't notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.
I'm different from any other designer, businesswise, in that I've built this company up and I own it. I never had business hype behind me to promote my image... My image is real... I have never had marketing people telling me what to do.
I'm very lucky. The public happens to like me. Maybe they like me because I use every opportunity to talk about injustice.
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.
At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.
My beauty secret is absolutely no sun.
I'm the proof - you can't throw away tradition.
I own my own company, so I've never had businessmen telling me what to do or getting worried if something doesn't sell. I've always had my own access to the public, because I started off making my clothes for a little shop and so I've always had people buying them.
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.
I love designing at the moment, I'm so happy with my work.
There is so much that people take for granted.
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.
The French have got taste.
In history people dressed much better than we do today.
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.
I was a punk before it got its name. I had that hairstyle and purple lipstick.
I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could. Advertising.
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 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.
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'd like to be the last person alive in the world! Yes, I'd like to know what happens.
I am in my own head most of the time.
I very rarely watch my own fashion shows, but the makeup for my Fall 2011 show was just brilliant.
When I was a little girl you used to learn to sew all the holes in things, darning socks, but nobody mends things anymore.
If you're too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.
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 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.
What I'm always trying to say to the consumer is: buy less, choose well, make it last.
You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.
There's nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.
I'm a fashion designer and people think, what do I know?
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.
Prince Charles is definitely my hero; he uses his position to do only good in this world.
Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin' hymns is a great thing to do.
Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it's popular, it's not culture.
Fashion has become so whatever. I don't think there are any stones left to unturn.
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.
I think I've got wiser.
I don't watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched 'The King's Speech' on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.
In the morning, I practice 15 minutes of yoga.
I think it is a good thing to buy less and choose well - it's good for the environment and to be fair it's also good for me because my clothes are quite expensive.
If you wear clothes that don't suit you, you're a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better.
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.
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.
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'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.
If you saw Queen Elizabeth it would be amazing, she came from another planet. She was so attractive in what she was wearing.
Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don't notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.
The last people with any ideas are young people.
