Documentaries about fashion icons seem to be popular at the moment… They’re in vogue, if you will. In the past twelve months André Leon Talley and Alexander McQueen had theirs and now it’s Vivienne Westwood’s time on the silver screen.
Directed by Lorna Tucker with Westwood at the centre, Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist will be a treat for the legions of Vivienne Westwood fans who admire her clothing and activism. But those not already familiar will be left wanting. It’s clear from the opening scene that she’s a difficult women to work with, even going as far as denouncing the documentary on her Twitter; this is probably why Tucker’s film appears to be missing large chunks of interesting material.
At the age of 77, Westwood has lived a long and full life. Her name is synonymous with the fashion world, having four international shops to her name and a client list that includes Marion Cotillard, Pharrell Williams and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. She featured heavily in the first Sex and the City film and has won British Designer of the Year twice, even being awarded an Order of the British Empire by the Queen for being a cultural icon.
But before all of this she was Malcolm McLaren’s partner, instrumental in the formation of the Sex Pistols and bringing the Punk movement from the fringe into the mainstream. If you’ve ever seen a hipster walking about in a torn shirt covered in safety pins you can thank Vivienne Westwood. She was the archetype of the hipster rock chic who literally did it before it was cool. Yet as interesting as her life is, it’s one that she seems bored talking about now. Her time in the punk movement is glossed over in about a minute and the passionate environmental activism, her current raison d’être, is shoehorned in at the end. It all seems like a missed opportunity, the most interesting parts of her life are the ones least covered.
It’s the burden of documentaries about fashion that to the uninitiated it seems a bit naff. Just like what happened with McQueen, a fair amount of the clothes look preposterous; no person outside the insular world of international fashion could take them seriously. Without the vocabulary and values of the fashion world it’s difficult to appreciate the personalities and clothes that the documentary assures us are groundbreaking works of art.
However, this thought stuck with me for a while before I got a firm slap from the stinging hang of self-awareness – I’m sure that a lot of the films that I watch and write about seem ridiculous to the cinematically uninitiated. Those in glass houses and ivory towers shouldn’t throw stones, especially when there’s so much humble pie to go eat.
Vivienne Westwood is best equated to a cactus flower: pretty yet prickly, so all credit to Lorna Tucker for not only sewing a documentary together, but making it interesting and visually striking at the same time. Dedicated followers of fashion should rush to it.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is in cinemas from 18th October through Madman Films.
