Vivienne Westwood Silk Corset Dress

For someone who regularly swatted away the industry that made her, audacious British fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood certainly knew her way around a garment. And she knew how to provoke. “I don’t follow fashion,” Westwood once told the New York Times. “I’ve never been interested in it.” Collectors are certainly interested in her work, and vintage Vivienne Westwood dresses, handbags, lingerie and jackets have become very desirable over the years.

Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in a village in Derbyshire, in central England, but moved to London as a teen. In the early 1960s, she began to make her own necklaces and other jewelry and met an artist, activist and entrepreneur named Malcolm McLaren. They became involved romantically and she made clothes for him in the style of the Teddy Boys — the city’s music-crazed, occasionally violent teenagers at the time who wore high-waisted trousers and tailored velvet blazers that drew on Edwardian-era fashions.

Westwood and McLaren opened a vintage shop on King’s Road in London in 1971. The flared denim and peasant blouses of the 1960s, then still popular with the “peace and love” set, didn’t hold any weight for Westwood. Instead, she was interested in provocative, edgy apparel. She repaired used clothing and endeavored to create bold new designs from scratch.

Together Westwood and McLaren sold older rock-and-roll records, customized T-shirts with antiestablishment slogans, biker jackets and snug trousers inspired by the Marlon Brando film The Wild One as well as bondage fetish wear. The shop, once called Let It Rock and then Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die before Sex became a more appropriate moniker, evolved into a youth mecca. The DIY garments — zippered tops, burnt tees emblazoned with anarchist messages — flew off the shelves. More notably, it brought punk to the masses.

Westwood was soon dressing the Sex Pistols, a band that McLaren managed, all the while bridging the gap between music and fashion in a manner that has reverberated throughout the industry for decades.

In 1981, the couple’s first fashion show marked the debut of their Pirate collection — a swashbuckler-themed line that sprang from Westwood’s research into Indigenous Americans and the “power garments” of the Louis XIV era. The collection’s ample proportions and cutting-edge tailoring countered punk’s geometry and tight latex fits as well as what rocker Adam Ant called the “Puritanism” that plagued England at the time. The Pirate collection’s enduring influence on the world of fashion as well as the theatrical work of designers such as John Galliano and Alexander McQueen is undeniable.

For the colorful corsets of her 1990 Portrait collection, Westwood drew on 18th-century oil paintings — her models donned the pearl necklaces that have become a social media star and a favorite of influencers and fashion lovers all over the world. For a jacket-and-shorts suit from her Fall/Winter 1996–97 Storm in a Teacup line, the designer used the extreme asymmetry of a tartan mash-up to confront, according to Westwood, “the horror of uniformity and minimalism.”

The self-taught Westwood enjoyed a rapid ascent in fashion, with British society embracing her looks and Vogue immortalizing them in its glossy pages. She garnered accolades for introducing corsets to the runway and dressed Kate Moss and Helena Bonham Carter. And an original Vivienne Westwood wedding dress is featured in 2008’s Sex and the City film.

The fires of political and environmental activism burned brightly for Westwood: She was a Greenpeace ambassador, having designed the organization’s official “Save the Arctic” logo; her clothing brand is committed to using recycled canvas and other eco-friendly materials in the production process; and in 2020, she protested the extradition of Julian Assange by suspending herself in a bird cage outside London’s Old Bailey court. But she will always be the grande dame of British design.

Find an extraordinary range of vintage Vivienne Westwood shirts, shoes, gowns and other items today on 1stDibs.

With entire museum exhibitions dedicated to examining fashion designers and their creations, we’re finally recognizing that costuming is art. Evening dresses over time have conveyed specific statements about social class, position and beliefs. Fashion is a powerful means of self-expression, and sophisticated vintage evening dresses and gowns by our favorite couturier play no small role in making us feel wonderful but, perhaps more importantly, making us feel like ourselves.

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Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel reimagined traditionally masculine garments for feminine shapes, and her elegant evening dresses and gowns promoted comfort and grace in women’s wear that had been dominated in the previous century by layers of fabric. Christian Dior's gowns celebrated luxury and femininity in the late 1940s — and gave to women the gift of glamour they’d lost in the miserable years of the war. French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent introduced innovative and highly coveted dress designs in the 1960s while at the same time challenging sexist stereotypes about which members of society could wear tuxedos.

Works by unconventional British designer John Galliano — featured in houses like Givenchy and Dior — redefined limits that dressmakers faced in terms of material, construction and vision during the late 20th century. From his embroidered absinthe-green Oscars gown for actress Nicole Kidman to the iconic sleeveless Dior newspaper dress that Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw made famous, Galliano’s intricate and multifaceted work is reliably collectible and newsworthy

Today’s designers target an increasingly broad audience with their boundary-crossing work, and their tendency to play off of each other’s ideas means that every walk down the runway is also a walk through an entire history of fashion design and dress craftsmanship.

Whether you gravitate toward backless maxi dresses or silk charmeuse gowns by Alexander McQueen or embellished, ruffled floral-print designs by Chloe or Versace, there is an extraordinary collection of vintage and designer evening dresses and gowns waiting for you on 1stDibs.