Westwood was born in 1941 in Derbyshire, UK, the eldest daughter of factory workers. At a young age she moved with her family to London, where she initially trained as a teacher. In 1962, Westwood was married for the first time (she designed her own wedding dress), but that marriage ended three years later when she met Malcolm McLaren-manager of the Sex Pistols and New York Dolls, among others.
It is with McLaren itself that he takes his first steps in the world of fashion. Together they opened a boutique on London’s King’s Road in 1971 and designed bold, avant-garde clothing inspired by BDSM without embarrassment. She thinks of rubber dresses, stiletto heels and clothes riddled with chains, safety pins and other references to slavery. In 1974 they called their clothing line “SEX”.
Her shirts with controversial prints (bare breasts, swastikas and pornographic cowboys, to name a few) were a favorite of the Sex Pistols, and her eccentric style earned her the nickname “Godmother of Punk”.
