Punk Beijing

What can I say...

This blog wouldn't exist without Punk. I was too young be one in 1976, and certainly too Catholic. Fast forward to 1999 and one of my newest and closest friends (professional troublemaker) Blue Doran sat me down in his Bangkok apartment over bottles of Sangsom and underneath his vintage movie poster collection (Midnight Cowboy and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid) draping the walls, he explained Punk to me from his first hand experience of following the Sex Pistols around as a fifteen year old from Worcester, and my mind was blown. I got the concept, I got the sizzle and I got the history all in one night, from a living witness and nothing was ever the same again. By coincidence my daughter's Aunty was a punk inspired designer in Thailand with the widely loved Scotch-Soda clothing brand.

Perhaps it is fitting then that this designer, often styled ironically in pin curls and pearls, and so involved with the pop cultural desecration and modern rebrand of British heritage, should depart in the same year as the woman whose image she once helped lance with a safety pin.

On one of my returns to the UK I stayed with Rob, my former design lecturer at Uni, and he had a very expensive Vivienne Westwood collection for both himself and his partner. 

She tossed her prezzies out when they separated and Rob mentioned it was about 20 grands worth. That's just the stuff she was given. Back in the 90's she also refused a chance to be a model for one of the Vivienne Westwood collections. Super Croydon girl is Audrey (went to school with Kate Moss), totally grounded and couldn't give a shit about any attention seeking lifestyle. In a way that's about as punk as it gets.

While at Robs we took the opportunity to go and see Vivienne's retrospective at the Victoria & Albert museum and that's when I really got into her work. He also gave me Jane Mulvagh's biography of Vivienne, An Unfashionable Life, to read. It's a really good book and provides a bit more dispassionate granularity than most biographies.

Raised in Derbyshire from working class stock, Ms Westwood established LET IT ROCK with Malcolm 'Svengali' McLaren on the Kings Road. I dare say Tavistock were all over the show, without even letting them know. Nobody wants to talk about that so let's roll on. After leaving the rock (let it rock, black rock, tavistock... quarry men then the rolling stones and G Brethren and so on and so forth).

I can't let it go

Vivienne Westwood did not feel pretty as a child, but while roaming a wood near the family home in Derbyshire she dreamt of becoming a beautiful wood fairy.

“I daydreamed that I would be walking in this wood and I would have this little house under these tree roots. I would have this fantastic dress and just come upon one or two little boys that I knew and they would just really be impressed by this dress. I always had this idea that some day I could make myself better.”

In a way it's Tolkienesque right? 

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. 

Next thing, we're in Rivendell

Perfect

All around the alleged globe, the British don't quite understand that of course the people are loved, but the empire?

... nah... the international community want to punch the football into the net like Maradona, unless it's filling Kiev's MuthaWEFFer pockets or the EU or the WHO or do I really need to continue?

If you consider yourself British (i'm a space mongrel) I can assure you there's lot's of British historiography around the world (all over the world)

She may have come to fashion designing at the comparatively late age of 33. 

Vivienne as it were.

You will only see two British iconographies from the slums of Rangoon to the Showrooms of Beijing. 

Those are Bentley Motors & Punks

All strata of society around the world know those two and till recently the Queen and the Beatles.

Prove me wrong