Worlds End by Vivienne Westwood & Malcolm McLaren pirate knotted tit top c. 1981

Dame Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren (1941–2022; 1946–2010) met in London during the early 1960s — Westwood, who was born in a village in Derbyshire, in central England, initially began her career by making necklaces and other jewelry, while McLaren was an artist, activist and entrepreneur. 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.

For someone who regularly swatted away the industry that made her, Westwood certainly knew her way around a garment. And the audacious British fashion designer knew how to provoke. “I don’t follow fashion,” Westwood once told the New York Times. “I’ve never been interested in it.” She was instead moved by parallel passions: a love of British design history and an unflinching urge to put a stick in the eye of authority. Today, collectors are deeply interested in vintage Vivienne Westwood dresses, handbags, lingerie and jackets.

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 line’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. McLaren and Westwood separated soon afterward, during the early 1980s.

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.

Find vintage Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren day dresses and other clothing on 1stDibs.