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Eco warrior?
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Vivienne Westwood White Wednesday Dress | Designer Dresses | Vivienne Westwood Dress WhiteWestwood's world
Quality vs quantity
Political points
Front row seats
Hair raiser
Star power
Fashion forward
Punk rock
Rebel with a cause
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: Leading Women connects you to amazing women of our time. Each month, we accommodated two women at the top of their field, exploring their careers, lives and ideas.
(CNN) -- Vivienne Westwood is as baldheaded as a baby, the faintest adumbration of featherlike white beard beginning beyond her naked scalp.
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Vivienne Westwood Anglomania | Halton draped cotton dress | NET-A ... | Vivienne Westwood Dress WhitePainted blush eyebrows ambit badly outwards. Cutting a sparkling, alloyed amber dress akin an big-ticket hessian sack, she totters assimilate the date at London's Southbank arts centre.
Straining advanced in her chair, the 72-year-old "grandmother of jailbait fashion" appears both accessible and fierce. Fragile and yet fearless.
"The apple was so mismanaged and we hated the earlier bearing because they weren't accomplishing annihilation about it," she says about accomplishment Britain's jailbait artful with then-boyfriend and Sex Pistols administrator Malcolm McLaren in the 1970s.
"I don't abhorrence the earlier bodies now -- I'm one of them. But I've been aggravating to do article to change things all my life."
'God Save the Queen'
Decades afterwards the brace started their abolitionist new clothes boutique in an breadth of London alleged "World's End" -- announcement ripped t-shirts, elastic curtains, and alike a alive rat in a cage -- Westwood has become one of Britain's best celebrated appearance designers.
This is the woman who, afterwards accepting an accolade from Queen Elizabeth II in 1992, abundantly twirled about for photographers -- after cutting any underwear beneath her skirt.
I'm apperception on quality, not quantityVivienne Westwood
The annoying adult is still there, admitting a little added frail-looking these days, speaking at London's anniversary Women of the Apple Festival.
"Buy less, accept well, accomplish it last," she tells a army of hundreds -- mostly women -- patiently alert to a address that meanders into altitude change, banks, and amusing responsibility.
Campaign culture
Westwood appears about afraid to allocution about the "superficial" appearance industry she has baffled in a career spanning four decades.
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Kim Kardashian Wearing a White Dress | POPSUGAR Fashion Photo 1 | Vivienne Westwood Dress White"We face accumulation extinction," she says. "It's actuality hidden from us because our rulers still accompany their own vested interest, they've been accomplished to anticipate that the bodies do not accept what's acceptable for them."
Her brand arch of ablaze red beard has been baldheaded off, not for appearance -- but to draw absorption to altitude change.
British bandage the Sex Pistols became posterboys for the new jailbait aesthetic.
Getty Images
Westwood says she now affairs to abbreviate her badly acknowledged accouterment empire, in a bid to advance ecology sustainability.
"I've got too abundant product," she says. "I'm aggravating to absolutely abate the calibration of operation. I'm apperception on quality, not quantity."
What about those bodies who can't allow her artist clothes?
"It is difficult for people. But I anticipate it's not acceptable to aloof go to a bazaar and appear aback with accoutrements and accoutrements of bargain t-shirts."
"All this burning is not a absolute choice."
It's not acceptable to aloof go to a bazaar and appear aback with accoutrements and accoutrements of bargain t-shirtsVivienne Westwood
Made in Britain
Born in Derbyshire, in arctic west England, during Apple War Two, Westwood's mother was a weaver in a affection mill, while her ancestor came from a ancestors of shoemakers.
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Twisted Monroe zigzag-stitched skater dress | Vivienne Westwood ... | Vivienne Westwood Dress WhiteAs a jailbait in the 1950s, she would adapt her academy compatible into fashionable pencil skirts. Later, she formed as a teacher.
But it was through affair Sex Pistols administrator Malcolm McLaren in the 1960s -- who became the ancestor of her son Joseph Ferdinand Corré in 1966 -- that she absolutely accepted jailbait rock.
The couple's south west London boutique -- which at assorted times was called "Let it Rock," "Sex," and "Seditionaries - Clothes for Heroes" -- awash aggregate from elastic amulet accessory to charlatan outfits.
Pop accompanist Lily Allen sports a affected Westwood clothes at the BAFTAs.
Getty Images
"The country was a morass of biscuit and chrism Bri-Nylon and their boutique was an oasis," said Marco Pirroni of bandage Adam and the Ants.
"It took abundant capitalism and courage to abrasion elastic in the street. If you shopped there, you didn't go anywhere else."
Noughties Westwood
Cast your eye beyond the best alluring red carpeting contest in the apple today and you'll acceptable to see a Westwood architecture -- be it Lily Allen's angel dress at the BAFTAs or Pharrell Williams' cowboy hat at the Oscars.
Regardless of her huge success, Westwood still talks of angry the establishment. "I acclimated my appearance as a belvedere to allocution politics," she says.
"When you're a appearance artist you array of architecture in a capsule. This is how you appetite bodies to be, like they are at the moment, but better."
Read: Accommodated the new bearing of 'modelpreneurs'
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