Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life by Jane Mulvagh HarperCollins 402pp, £19.99 in UK.
In November 1989, John Fairchild, the highly influential former publisher of the American fashion trade newspaper Women's Wear Daily, released a book called Chic Savages, in which he named the six international designers he believed mostimportant at the time. Of these, only one was a woman, British and with serious monetary problems: Vivienne Westwood. Described by Fairchild as "like theAlice in Wonderland of fashion", Westwood is now one of the world's best-known designers, her name and her eccentric clothes - those bustles, those bustiers, those platform shoes which caused Naomi Campbell to crash on the catwalk - having become common currency. Finding someone, anyone, who actually wearsWestwood, on the other hand, remains a bit of a challenge. No wonder her company has decided to capitalise on the Westwood label by releasing a fragrance thisautumn. While she may no longer struggle to make a living, she still earns nothing like the money made by equivalent designers in France, Italy and the United States. Among the amusing stories told here is one concerning a large order for clothes made by Barbra Streisand four years ago. So chaotic was the Westwood operationthat the garments missed one deadline-when Streisand was due to perform before President Clinton - and, when they finally arrived in the United States, fittedso badly they could not be worn.
Westwood's story both confirms and confounds conspiracy theories. That her economic success has been so limited only seems to prove that fashion is controlled by a handful of big international players to the exclusion of everyone else. And yet the popular notion that fashion is run by misogynistic gay men whose ideal woman has the body of a skinny young boy receives something of a setback when Westwood's work is examined. One reason why she does not enjoy greater popularity among her potential clientele may be because her clothes so often look like a drag queen's fantasy. According to Jane Mulvagh, American transvestites often queue to buy new Westwood collections and shops in Los Angeles "could not stock enough pairs of her high, platformed shoes inmen's sizes". A remark made by Westwood, simultaneously endearing and pathetic, is quoted: "You have a better life," she once said, "if you wear impressive clothes."
From Chanel onwards, women designers have usually been associated with bringing a sense of realism to fashion. However, even as a proponent of punk, Westwood was primarily interested in fantasy. This tendency has become steadily more accentuated with age so that now the only women who look totally at, home in her clothes are camp icons such as Jerry Hall. Mulvagh describes Westwood as "a bitter romantic", referring to the designer elsewhere as "a fashion Luddite who now favours traditional dressmaking techniques and textiles ... of a bygone age".
Like so many of her. compatriots, she is more interested in the pastas a source of inspiration than the present. When Westwood was employed as Professor of Fashion at the Vienna Academy of Applied Arts, she instructed students to copy historic costumes and traditional rural dress. Her own wantof formal training has encouraged an obsessive admiration of knowledge. Like so many other autodidacts, Westwood reveres learning but lacks the disciplinenecessary to study. She is forever adopting new interests but failing to follow them through, inclined to quote authors whose work has been half-digested, and is easily enthralled by anyone who appears more confident than herself.
For a woman with the confidence and authority to establish a business with a global reputation, Westwood has persistently tended to be dependent on men such as Malcolm McLaren and her cur- rent husband, Andreas Kronthaler, who would appear to be pursuing their own interests rather than hers. Jane Mulvagh, a highly experienced fashion Journalist, tells Westwood's story frankly yet sympathetically. Whether the tale needs four hundred pages is another matter, but there could be no better proof than this book that fashion is a confused and contradictory business.