Born in a period of economic malaise, punk’s energy coalesced into a powerful subcultural phenomenon that transcended music to affect other fields, and especially graphic design. When punk first hit the market, it terrified the record industry, “but it generated a market,” said Blauvet. “There became an opening for graphic designers to design without any rules. Typographic designers had more freedom. Album covers could be totally conceptual. You didn’t use a corporate approach, or if you did, it was ironic.” In New York, artists such as Robert Longo designed album covers for musicians like Glenn Branca, while the photographs of Blondie’s Chris Stein, who shot Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry, offer a record of punk hubs like CBGB.

One of the inaccuracies around punk is that it’s a reaction to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but punk starts before those regimes take power in the mid-1970s,” said the curator, Andrew Blauvelt. “Punk did become a reaction to neoconservative rule. It felt necessary at the time to provide a social resistance against some of those aspects against neoconservative policy, but had longer-lasting effects, as well.” She was born in Tintwistle, just outside the mill town of Glossop, Derbyshire, the daughter of Dora (nee Ball) and Gordon Swire. Her father was a factory worker; her mother had been in the mills and appreciated a length of good wool worsted – although everything was in short supply during Viv’s childhood. Her education at Glossop grammar school ended in 1958, when the Swires saved enough to buy a little post office business in London, and moved to Harrow. Viv soon left her art school course, frustrated that it prohibited sewing. Her own style was beehive hair, pencil skirts, stiletto heels – all the music-allied experiments of London’s first teen generation. People ask: where does this movement come from?” said Blauvelt. “It was all against the systemic control of the music system. This idea of provocation in the streets, the field of punk was a social protest, elements of that still exist.” McLaren's Midas touch came and went throughout his career, but ideas never left him. He blended funk and orchestra on the 1989 album Waltz Darling and recorded the 1994 concept album Paris, which featured Catherine Deneuve. He wrote a song for Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill Vol 2 (2004), and secured a Hollywood deal as an ideas man for Steven Spielberg. He even became an outspoken critic of the burger industry by co-producing the 2006 film Fast Food Nation. He also channelled his bittersweet view of London into programmes for Radio 2 and Channel 4, but cancelled a plan to run for mayor of London in 2000. As one of the chief architects of punk, she was the fairy godmother of how every subculture since has used clothes to define its tribe. That streetwear has leapfrogged haute couture to become the leading edge of the global fashion industry owes a great deal to a seamstress from Glossop, Derbyshire who partnered with her boyfriend, Malcolm McLaren, to open a tiny shop on King’s Road in London in 1971.Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren in 1977. The clothes sold by their shop Seditionaries on Kings Road, Chelsea, were attributed to both of them. Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

By this time Westwood was broke, but with practical help and a modest loan from family and friends, reopened the shuttered Worlds End, lit by candles after the electricity was cut off, and easily sold her limited supplies. SEX: Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die was a compilation album edited by Marco Pirroni, which was compiled from the records on the jukebox at Malcolm McLaren's shop SEX.In 1979, Westwood and McLaren’s store was reinvented as Worlds End, a name taken from the area of Chelsea it is located in, viewed in the 18th century as being on the very outskirts of the city. “Even at the time, people didn’t really walk much further than the Old Town Hall, which was about halfway down from Sloane Square,” Costiff explains. The Harris tweed and later, far wilder, Brit collections gave Westwood her second, and permanent, fashion identity: London tailoring plus romantic gowns, with a dissident edge, labelled with her logo, a coronation orb circled by Saturn’s rings. Vivienne Westwood with Andreas Kronthaler on the runway during the Vivienne Westwood womenswear fall/winter 2022-2023 show at Paris Fashion Week, March 2022. Photograph: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images She became a primary school teacher and in 1962 married Derek Westwood, a toolmaker with ambitions, which he achieved, to be an airline pilot. Their son, Ben, was born in 1963, but the couple separated soon after, divorcing in 1966. She returned to her parents, and began to make jewellery for a stall in Portobello Road. Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics, 1976-1986” on view at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) from April 9 through August 18. Explore the punked up visual fest here.

How to encompass the vastness of her legacy? Her punk phase is eternally referenced, morphing onwards through generations, and turning up through time in the safety-pinned collections of Gianni Versace and many more. In the days following her death, hundreds of people have posted memories of how her clothes led to self-discovery. Fashion academics have told me that students today quote her as their inspiration, both as a designer and as an activist. Her allegiance to youth, and to what matters, passed on her courage to so many designers to be themselves, from John Galliano to Matty Bovan. That radical power of Vivienne’s will continue, undiminished, long into the future. The punk aesthetic also carries elements of futurism – just look at the constructivist posters of Kraftwerk – as well as German expressionism, Soviet-era posters, pop art and the Bauhaus design movement.Originating at Bloomfield Hills, Michigan's Cranbrook Art Museum, the exhibition has been adapted for its run at MAD to include selections that showcase the visual output of New York City's punk scene: flyers from the famed East Village punk venue CBGB; concert posters and memorabilia from Blondie, the Ramones, and other artists; early issues of Punk magazine; and more reports Dexigner. No fashion designer ever had a Paris show like the one staged by Vivienne Westwood in 1991. Although she was by then 50 and had been making clothes for sale for 20 years – and the British Fashion Council had named her designer of the year – she stitched much of that collection on her own sewing machine in her shabby south London flat, hand-finishing it in the van that transported her, and the models, to France, where the couturier Azzedine Alaïa had invited her to guest-show. Despite those limitations, the collection was a major success. Amid the tortured souls of punk, Westwood carved out her own path, one that was full of humour, beauty and joy. Her clothes – like her worldview – were anti-establishment, but never nihilistic. They were deliberately off-kilter – partly by dint of being ahead of their time – but they were always elegant.