Vivienne westwood quotes

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.

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!'

Every time I hear that word, I cringe. Fun! I think it's disgusting; it's just running around. It's not my idea of pleasure.

If you ask me what I think people should be getting next season, I’ll tell you what I’d like them to buy—nothing. I’d like people to stop buying and buying and buying.

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.

It is all about technique. The great mistake of this century is to put inspiration and creativity first.

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.

Everyone has a masculine and feminine side; masculine qualities and feminine qualities. We've all got these sides to ourselves. And clothes can tell that story. People would think this is very unsympathetic, but I would always say to people, you don't actually need to go through with an operation, can't you just be? You are who you are! But then people say to me, "Oh, you're really dreadful, how would you know?".

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

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

Well, I'm very much a literary person. And my fashion always tells a story somehow. 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.

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.

Shoes must have very high heels and platforms to put women's beauty on a pedestal.

Women fight for democracy and engage in the world. But they shouldn't try and be copying men and be masculine; they should anchor on the home and build on those fundamentals.

Art should never be sociological; it has got to be timeless. It's got to be your vision and how you can represent the world you see.

The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody's interested in somebody who's just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing - there is no latest thing. It's all rubbish.

The most erotic zone is the imagination.

I am attracted to people who make this effort in knowing what suits them - they are individual and stylish.

Buy less. Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity. Everybody’s buying far too many clothesI mean, I know I’m lucky, I can just take things and borrow them and I’m just okay, but I hate having too many clothes. And I think that poor people should be even more careful. It doesn't mean therefore you have to just buy anything cheap. Instead of buying six things, buy one thing that you really like. Don't keep buying just for the sake of it.

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

I haven't told anyone this before, but when I was a teenager... I actually thought I was turning into a boy, and I didn't really care. It didn't bother me at all.

How impossible it is for us to imagine ourselves victims of disaster. We suffer for the poor people who were thrown into the sea from their cruise ship off the coast of Tuscany, some losing their lives. Imagine a world of accelerating natural disasters, one after the other so that nobody can help anyone else.

I was so upset with what was going on in the world. I just couldn't stand the idea of being people tortured and that we even had such a thing as war. I hated the older generation, who had not done anything about it. Punk was a call-to-arms for me.

I'm always attracted to people who interest me. They've got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They're interested in people.

Print some money and give it to us for the rain forests.

The sexiest people are thinkers.

There's always a polemic in my clothes.

It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity.

I don't have faith in young people any more. I don't waste time trying to communicate with them.

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

In the 18th century, if women wanted to travel and they dressed as a man, people would not look twice. Your clothes said everything. Also there were masters and servants swapping clothes. You could be anything, your clothes told everything!

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

If you wear clothes that don't suit you, you're a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better.

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.

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.

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

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

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.

Instead of buying six things, buy one thing that you really like. Don't keep buying just for the sake of it.

The best fashion accessory is a book.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

I like to literally put women on a pedestal

In history people dressed much better than we do today.

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

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

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

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn't have anything. It's influenced the way I look at the world.

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

The muscular, athletic type is not representative of the human race, who are varied in their physique.

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

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.

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

Fasion is about eventually becoming naked.

I'm not trying to do something different, I'm trying to do the same thing but in a different way

The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas.

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.'

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

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

Buy less, choose well, make it last. Quality rather than quantity: That is true sustainability. If people only bought beautiful things rather than rubbish, we wouldn't have climate change!

Save the rainforest for your loved ones

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 was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle.

It's better to look important than sexy.

When I was a little girl you used to learn to sew all the holes in things, darning socks, but nobody mends things anymore.

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.

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.

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

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.

If Mrs Merkel wants to wear Westwood, I can promise that I will design clothes for her that will make her look chic, refined and influential.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Buy less, choose well & do it yourself!

The fight is no longer between the classes or between rich and poor but between the idiots and the eco-conscious.

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

There's nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.

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.

My clothes have a story. They have an identity. They have a character and a purpose. That's why they become classics. Because they keep on telling a story. They are still telling it.

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

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

Buy less, choose well: that's the maxim. Quality not quantity. That's the most environmentally friendly thing you can do.

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

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.

There’s this idea that somehow you’ve got to keep changing things, and as often as possible. Maybe if people just decided not to buy anything for a while, they’d get a chance to think about what they wanted; what they really liked.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

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.

The whole basis of my work is analysing what I do and building some sort of intellectual framework. The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas. They are the only subversion.

I don't think punk fashion is a specter or overemphasized - it made a big impression, as there had never been anything like it before.

My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent.

I really don't like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they're horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They'd better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

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.

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

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.

Nothing is costed properly and it's destroying the earth. We need to re-educate people that what is good for the planet is good for the financial system.

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.

I was a punk before it got its name. I had that hairstyle and purple lipstick.

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.

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.

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.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

Fashion is life-enhancing and I think it's a lovely, generous thing to do for other people.

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

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 think that feminists have definitely underestimated the role that women have had historically. I think I would be insecure if I were to be a man; there's so much pressure on you.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn't care about suffering. I always did.

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

Everybody should have a fair deal; everybody should have the chance to life in this world. If we were evolved as human beings, we would hopefully be able to alleviate suffering in the world.

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.

A status symbol is a book. A very easy book to read is The Catcher in the Rye. Walk around with that under your arm, kids. That is status.

The young need discipline and a full bookcase.

You've got to invest in the world, you've got to read, you've got to go to art galleries, you've got to find out the names of plants. You've got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We're amazing people.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they're not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

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.

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 think it is terribly important to have opinions, and to think. We live in a world of action without thought.

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.

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

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 can't think without my glasses.