Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist: delightful

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist couldn't be a complete portrait if it tried. But without appearing to try to do so, it becomes wildly entertaining. 

Vivienne Westwood, aka Dame Vivienne Westwood, is a very successful fashion designer. She is also a bundle of contradictions and just delightful. There is something endlessly appealing about a woman of a certain age who is determined, opinionated and foul-mouthed. Her clothing has been provocative, outrageous and defiantly whimsical. It appears that she is as well.

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist begins with Westwood seated in a very staged and austere but luxurious setting. She appears distracted, inconvenienced and self-effacing. "Just let me talk and get it over with," she says, before adding, "It's so boring." There may have been "boring" periods in Westwood's life but the film doesn't have time for them. The attempts at chronological history come and go but Westwood's narration continually derails the historical accuracy and punctures any pomposity. Besides it is much more fun watching her work, which seems to be how she spends all her time.

When designing she is laser focussed, fussing over the tiniestt details, and utterly ruthless. She casually and brutally berates her staff - any one of whom would make for a film of their own, they are all characters, mostly bitchy - and pronounces that an entire line is "shit." There are interludes with her husband Andreas Kronthaler, a former student (he arrived at her atelier, "a dirty place," and never left, sleeping "under a table on leopard skin fabric" and acquiring fleas before they became a couple), who now does what Westwood estimates to be 50 percent of the design work. 

He is spacey, inarticulate and daffily charming. She explains the attraction, though she is apparently dependent upon and smitten with him, as "I like living with him as much as I like being alone." He is not the only enigma in Westwood's circle, her two sons appear and give coldly loving assessments (googling either of them produces material for another dozen documentaries), and of course the notorious Malcolm MacLaren gets a central role in the early part of the film.

As a biography or investigative journalism, Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is a delightful off-kilter sketch. There is context but Westwood is contradictory and quite unconcerned with her legacy or past. She was at the epicentre of punk but dismisses it hilariously as a failure of nerve. She single-handedly invented the New Romantics and all the fashion and music that flowed from that period. The famous Sex and the City wedding dress is never even mentioned. A museum curator occasionally pops in to attempt to explain the importance of Westwood's designs in a cultural context, but who cares when Kate Moss is there to boast that she could have been Westwood's only lesbian lover?

The chaos and comedy pull into focus when Westwood reads an article in The Guardian and, "I was devastated. The human race is facing mass extinction." So she becomes an activist fighting against climate change. But being green conflicts with a multi-national corporation and Westwood's struggle to do the right thing slams head on into the business of making a profit. The scenes of her company's CEO, who could be an extra in any mafioso movie, arriving by limousine while Westwood pedals her bicycle around town, speak volumes. 

But she always gets her way. At the grand opening of the Manhattan store, another fashion legend and documentary subject, Andre Talley intones, "She's the height of elegance. She's not here, she's working on her thesis about global warming or something." When she does show up at a store opening, her only comment is "I hate the music." The DJ complies. She sails with Greenpeace, protests, and her clothing designs are emblazoned with slogans. Pamela Anderson, another fashionable activist, pals around with Westwood before stating, "She's on this planet for a reason. To stir things up a little."

She, oblivious, is mocked on a talk show but gets revenge by winning designer of the year twice in a row, once presented the award by either Princess Diana or a very convincing drag queen. Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is that kind of film. So full of fascinating details and droll bitchery that it hangs together despite itself and an overwhelming wealth of material. Any woman who creates a line of "rubberwear for the office" and complains, "Really? Have I got to talk bout the Sex Pistols? Malcolm put together a pop group, they were quite the phenomenon," can't help but have an audience rooting for her.

Very early in the film Westwood is asked if she will retire. She says that people "retire to do what they like." If she retired she would learn Chinese because "I feel like I ought to do it." Instead of retiring she is always evolving, always poking at the establishment, following her muse. And it is a sheer delight to watch her. There are dozens of quotes, comic moments, fashion faux pas and triumphs, and a sense of wonder and engagement, the desire to keep learning, that is breathtaking and inspiring. Westwood might just save the world, after all she has made a career, an artistic statement, out of "these things you put on that make you able to face the world in a spectacular way."