Top 160 Vivienne Westwood Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 4

101. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

102. “I don’t have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I’m left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.”

— Vivienne Westwood

103. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

104. “I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who’s spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.”

— Vivienne Westwood

105. “My clothes are very popular in Japan.”

— Vivienne Westwood

106. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

107. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

108. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

109. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

110. “Sometimes you need to transport your idea to an empty landscape and then populate it with fantastic looking people.”

— Vivienne Westwood

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

— Vivienne Westwood

112. “But, having a perfume and license, in general, is a financial necessity. A designer must, to reap back the money spent on prototypes and all that sort of thing.”

— Vivienne Westwood

113. “I was still interested in the youth rebellion but never-the-less I stopped being a victim. Stopped trying to attack the establishment realizing that it takes too much of your energy.”

— Vivienne Westwood

114. “Home, more than anything, means warmth and bed.”

— Vivienne Westwood

115. “I own my own company, so I’ve never had businessmen telling me what to do or getting worried if something doesn’t sell. I’ve always had my own access to the public, because I started off making my clothes for a little shop and so I’ve always had people buying them.”

— Vivienne Westwood

116. “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!”

— Vivienne Westwood

117. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

118. “I don’t watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched ‘The King’s Speech’ on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.”

— Vivienne Westwood

119. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

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

— Vivienne Westwood

121. “My clothes have always got a very strong dynamic rapport with the body – they are very body conscious, they help you to look glamorous, more hourglass, more woman.”

— Vivienne Westwood

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

— Vivienne Westwood

123. “To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.”

— Vivienne Westwood

124. “What changed our lives forever was when Malcolm had the idea to sell rock ’n roll records to trendy customers.”

— Vivienne Westwood

125. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

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

— Vivienne Westwood

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

— Vivienne Westwood

128. “I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party.”

— Vivienne Westwood

129. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

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

— Vivienne Westwood

131. “Personally I’m not a feminist, as I can’t stand puritans.”

— Vivienne Westwood

132. “The main message we want to get out there is that climate change is caused by the rotten economic system.”

— Vivienne Westwood

133. “If you’re too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.”

— Vivienne Westwood

134. “Feminists wish women to seem like men. They’re not men.”

— Vivienne Westwood

135. “We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.”

— Vivienne Westwood

136. “I do not approve of museums trying just to get people to come in. Whistler was very, very clear on this.”

— Vivienne Westwood

137. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

138. “I have too much product, and I’m trying to rein it in and sell more of my main collection. I wish you didn’t have to design so often; it would be good if you could keep on selling the same things for a few years and not have to do new things all the time.”

— Vivienne Westwood

139. “I was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle.”

— Vivienne Westwood

140. “I have a company, and I’ve got to think about that. I’m trying to do my best there, and that’s a much harder task. We recycle as much as possible, and we conserve. But I’ve always been one to save everything – I even walk up stairs on the very inside or the very outside to not wear out the tread.”

— Vivienne Westwood

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

— Vivienne Westwood

142. “I didn’t do anything at the Queen, whom I admire.”

— Vivienne Westwood

143. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

144. “I always tried to do things by example, even though I was not a very good mother regarding routines and family life.”

— Vivienne Westwood

145. “Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.”

— Vivienne Westwood

146. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

147. “I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring.”

— Vivienne Westwood

148. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

149. “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.”

— Vivienne Westwood

150. “If we didn’t have the Chinese buying things, we’d be on the floor.”

— Vivienne Westwood