I don't follow politics much.
— Vivienne Westwood
I always tried to do things by example, even though I was not a very good mother regarding routines and family life.
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.
To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I've got books I need to read.
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.
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.
If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.
I can't think without my glasses.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.
I think it's important to vote.
However, because Britain is young and exciting, I did show my second line here once or twice.
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 disagree with everything I used to say.
More people should read books. It's the most concentrated experience you can have.
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.
What I remember as a child is that other kids didn't care about suffering. I always did.
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.
Every time I have to look up a word in the dictionary, I'm delighted.
All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.
I don't have faith in young people any more. I don't waste time trying to communicate with them.
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 was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle.
We based the look on rock 'n roll right from the beginning.
What changed our lives forever was when Malcolm had the idea to sell rock 'n roll records to trendy customers.
The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.
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.
My son has followed fashion since he was a punk. He and I agree that fashion is about sex.
I am attracted to people who make this effort in knowing what suits them - they are individual and stylish.
I tend not to like an awful lot of what is going out under my name now because it is just all product. Who needs it?
My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent.
I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring.
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.
People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much.
The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas.
I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party.
Personally I'm not a feminist, as I can't stand puritans.
It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity.
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.
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.
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 is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.
Feminists wish women to seem like men. They're not men.
My clothes are very popular in Japan.
I didn't do anything at the Queen, whom I admire.
