To talk about Dame Vivienne Westwood is to talk about a designer who refused to separate fashion from consequence. Long before sustainability became a marketing strategy, Westwood was weaponising the catwalk, turning slogans into silhouettes and protest into spectacle. Punk was only the beginning; what followed was decades of disruption – climate activism, anti-fracking tours, actual tanks on manicured lawns – all delivered with the authority of someone who understood image as power.
This London Fashion Week, that power settles into Soho. Vivienne Westwood: An Active Life opens at The Lighthouse, the five-storey Georgian townhouse at 48 Berwick Street founded by her son Joe Corré. The exhibition, staged in collaboration with Corré, his daughter and the model Cora, photographer Ki Price and collector Steven Philip, brings together 24 images selected from Price’s archive of more than 50,000 frames. Fifty per cent of proceeds from the limited-edition prints will go to The Vivienne Foundation. Downstairs, Philip has curated a vintage sale spanning the 1970s punk years through to late-period Westwood, with museum mannequins standing guard over tartan, corsetry and slogans.
Vivienne Westwood protests on the runway with son Joe Corré in the #INEOSVTHEPEOPLE catwalk presentation outside INEOS headquarters in Hans Crescent on February 15, 2018 in London
For Price, now 52, the show is less retrospective than responsibility. He began photographing Westwood’s shows backstage in his mid-thirties, but soon became bored of straight-on catwalk shots and developed a hunger for intimacy. The real turning point came in 2014. “I went to photograph her and End Ecocide at a press conference,” he says. Afterward, he asked to shoot portraits. “We just clicked. And she was very attentive and really nice.” Two months later he was invited to join her on Corré’s Talk Fracking tour. “Which is really sort of where the relationship started to take place and shaped up.”
Perhaps the most arresting image in the exhibition was made on that tour, on the Gower Peninsula in Swansea. Westwood stands on the beach draped in nothing but a Welsh flag, a “Talk Fracking” plate held like a shield, the sea pushing in behind her. Price had long wanted to photograph her nude, inspired by Juergen Teller’s bath portrait, but reframed through activism. “I’d wanted to shoot Vivienne naked… but I wanted it the way of activism.” He proposed it; PR advised him to ask Corré. “You can imagine the scenario of going to speak to Joe and saying, “Joe, can I shoot your mum naked or something… and on the beach”, you know?”
Vivienne Westwood drives a tank with the “Nanas Against Fracking” to make “Chemical Attack’”on David Cameron’s Witney Constituency Home on September 11, 2015
They compromised with the flag. “Vivienne was all about signs, you know, so to her, the wordings on the signs were the most important thing. She was always like, “Ki, have you got the sign in [the frame]”?” The image, he says, is “probably my most powerful and favourite image of her.”
Elsewhere, Westwood drives a tank into David Cameron’s Oxfordshire constituency with the Nanas Against Fracking, the slogan “Chemical Attack” emblazoned across the vehicle. “We went to David Cameron’s country home on a tank. I mean, who does that shit?” Price laughs. “Who has got the front to just turn up in a tank.” Security was “violently hard” on protesters, he says, but the Nanas – grandmothers running educational workshops near fracking sites – complicated that dynamic. The photograph he chose is tight: Westwood commanding, the tank unmistakable. “In a lot of my images I really like to show her power.”
Vivienne Westwood celebrates Julian Assange’s 50th Birthday after face planting a birthday cake. July 3, 2021
Power also pulses through the image of Westwood at the Old Bailey in 2020, dressed as a canary in a cage in support of Julian Assange. Price prefers the portrait made moments later, outside the cage, the “I am Julian Assange” sign legible. “I wanted to get that sign in,” he explains. The composition mattered, but the message mattered more.
In another frame, she has cake smeared across her face, celebrating Assange’s 50th birthday. “She face-planted the cake,” Price says, still delighted. He almost missed that shot entirely. “I get a call from the PR, saying, Ki, where are you? And I’m like, What do you mean? Where am I? I didn’t even know there was an activism stunt going on.” It was lucky he rode a motorbike.
Chaos Beanie – Multinational Total announces its plans to invest in controversial shale gas (fracking) technology in the UK, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood calls upon EU citizens to vote for “End Ecocide” in Europe. January 15, 2014
Then there is the February 2018 runway protest outside INEOS headquarters on Hans Crescent: a strip of white carpet unfurled before Fashion Week, Westwood marching in a purple sweater, ‘Talk Fracking’ and ‘Climate Chaos’ T-shirts marching behind her. “[It was] just throwing a white catwalk down,” Price says, “but if you think about somebody with Vivienne’s presence, [you understand that] it’s gonna have such a great impact.” In the background of one image sits the Ecuadorian Embassy where Assange once took refuge – a coincidence Price only noticed later when viewing the file enlarged.
Selecting 24 images from tens of thousands was, he admits, “with great difficulty.” He worked closely with Corré and Cora, editing from an initial 100. “I wanted Joe, obviously, to be very happy with the images… I wanted to make sure we were on the right page.” Once the title was agreed – An Active Life – the direction sharpened. “We wanted to celebrate her activism. And for it to continue.”
Pop Sucks – Vivienne Westwood AW20/21 presentation and exhibition during London Fashion Week February 2020 at The Serpentine Gallery on February 13, 2020 in London, England
Why show so many unseen works now? “I guess there’s a relative time after somebody has passed away where you want to have a period of mourning, but for it not to be buried.” He adds simply: “The best thing I can do is show [here], make sure these images get seen.”
At The Lighthouse this coming week, Westwood’s presence feels less archival than immediate. In the townhouse Corré imagines as a creative hub, her slogans remain legible, her defiance intact. Price’s photographs – barely retouched, signs left in, assistants visible at the frame’s edge – insist on the reality of it all. “I wanted them to be real,” he says. Real, and still reverberating.
Photography by Ki Price.
I Am Julian Assange – Vivienne Westwood at The Old Bailey dressed as a Canary to show her support for Julian Assange. July 21, 2020
Vivienne Westwood on The Gower Peninsula, Swansea on The Talk Fracking tour. June, 2014
