I’ve never been hard enough for punk.
The music was always too harsh, the hair too crunchy, the spikes too… spikey.
I’ve flirted with it, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been wearing the same pair of big black boots – good for kicking things – since I was 14.
I have gone through countless kohl pencils and even had blue hair at one point (I stand by it, it was cool).
Most importantly I’ve tried, and I still try each week in this column, to stand up for the things I believe in.
But I’ve never quite pulled it off. Never had the hard edges needed to carve out real change.
Not once have I truly been able to stick up two fingers at the establishment without looking over my shoulder, worrying I’ll get in trouble.
When it comes down to it, I’ve spent most of my life being a bit of a goody-two-shoes.
And that’s very Not Punk.
So I’ve no business being devastated that doyenne of punk, Vivienne Westwood, has died. But it feels like a platform sole to the chest all the same.
Queen of couture used powers for good
Westwood has, for me at least, been the most visible light at the intersection between art and activism.
I knew her first as an avant-garde, high fashion icon styling the pop stars of my generation, from Lady Gaga to Lana Del Rey, in looks that seemed to capture their personas perfectly.
And when she started injecting climate activism into her runway shows, I thought she was the coolest lady in the game.
Teenage Rebecca had no idea this flamboyant, orange-headed couture queen had a whole life before regency-inspired corsets and bardot busts.
To me, she had just always been Famous Fashion Designer Vivienne Westwood – I didn’t think about how she got there.
It wasn’t until I read punk musician Viv Albertine’s memoir that I found out Westwood was so much more than ‘the kooky one’ on the catwalk scene.
It must have been equal parts hilarious and infuriating for my parents to hear me going “She dressed the Sex Pistols? She had a shop called Sex?! She’s amazing!” like a mouse discovering cheese.
She famously said there was “no punk before Malcolm (McLaren, her then-partner) and I” and from the accounts of those around at the time, I’d say her immodesty was justified.
Punk was committing to more than a look
In my adolescence, punk was as easy to co-opt as any other style, with ripped-up plaid skirts and chain-mail tops firmly in the mainstream.
I didn’t know until far too late that Westwood wasn’t simply playing with those things – she put them there to begin with.
I learned that her shop was the go-to place for the original punks in London – punks that would risk beatings and worse to wear her clothes, they meant that much.
That one blew my mind.
No one I knew growing up was that committed to their look.
In fact, none of us were that committed to anything.
We were the ironic generation, too cool to care. The most we could muster was a bit of whimsy in the face of the machine, after our mothers and fathers raged against it.
Maybe for a while there just wasn’t as much to rage against. But Westwood never stopped.
She continued making things she was passionate about, and taking her work seriously, right until the end. (In fact, her now-partner says she’s left him “plenty to be getting on with” which I think is completely aspirational.)
Now the internet is flooded with slideshows of Westwood’s rule-flouting life, and I can’t help but feel that her legacy shouldn’t be just inventing punk, but remaining punk.
And, for people like me – a little more timid, a little less bold and brash – making punk into a costume we could try out. Making clothes mean more than just how they looked.
Whether it was a hot pink graphic tee from New Look or a few checked badges from Claire’s Accessories on my school blazer, Westwood’s vision was so strong and so true that is echoed through decades to get to mine.
Vivienne Westwood made rage fashionable
Wearing (heavily diluted) versions of her designs always made me feel more powerful than I actually was. It still does.
And now as an adult, facing down another year of Tory austerity, climate emergency, rampant misogyny, and infuriating passivity towards global injustices, I could do with feeling a little bit punk.
None of us can afford to fear getting into trouble anymore.
Westwood kept punk alive for over 50 years. Now she’s dead, but her memory lives on in countless red carpet carousels and cut-up collages of teenage inspiration.
She taught thousands of young people not only how to wear safety pins like a brooch, but how to wear our rage with panache.
I’ve got rage now. I’ve got in in spades.
So I’m ready to swap out my goody-two-shoes for some even bigger, better-for-kicking-stuff boots that Viv would approve of.
And maybe in 2023, I’ll finally be able to say that punk is my style.
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