Get a Life: The Diaries of Vivienne Westwood

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Vivienne Westwood began Get A Life, her online diary, in 2010 with an impassioned post about Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Since then, she has written two or three entries each month, discussing her life in fashion and her involvement with art, politics and the environment. However, with that being said, it's a little hard to review somebody's innermost thoughts! So, I figure that I should tell you all right now that if you enjoy biographies, if you enjoy women with conviction, and if you enjoy reading about politics, this is the book for you. Yoga. After calling my friend Shami Chakrabati to talk about how climate change is destroying the world, I fly to Rome to have a tofu salad with Pamela Anderson. I tell her the financial crisis is the exact mirror of the ecological disaster. She agrees. Pamela is one of the smartest people I know. The next day, I start working on my Gold Label collection. I decide on two ribbons and a hat. Hats add gravitas. Fashion can be so demanding sometimes. In a normal day, I start work at 10 in the morning and end at 10.36. Westwood had 11 exclusively-owned shops in UK; four in London, and one in Bicester Village, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Manchester and Nottingham. She also has showrooms in Milan, Paris and Los Angeles. The godmother of punk has got a new book on the way. Entitled Get a Life: The Diaries of Vivienne Westwood, the book “spans six years of Climate Revolution, fashion and activism” according to the publisher.

Dame Vivienne Westwood, DBE, RDI (born Vivienne Isabel Swire) was a British fashion designer largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream. Fashion designer, political activist, national icon: Vivienne Westwood sets down her unique vision of the world in her blog, Get A Life . Here's the cream of the cream from six years of troublemaking.Taking action is something Westwood does all the time – earlier this week she hit headlines for criticising the British Museum, calling for it to end its controversial sponsorship deal with oil and gas company BP. “As the impacts of climate change are being felt more forcefully around the world, it is vital that prominent public institutions like the British Museum play their part in minimising the environmental impacts of their activities...” she said.

My diaries are about the things I care about,” says Westwood. “Not just fashion but art and writing, human rights, climate change, freedom. I call the diaries Get a Life as that’s how I feel: you’ve got to get involved, speak out and take action.”Everyone knows it: Vivienne Westwood is a goddess. But how did she transcend her mortal status? Aside from her visionary, arresting designs, what blows our minds about Westwood is her eternal youth. It’s not just her trendiness and her hot hubby. It’s her unwavering progressiveness. It’s her ability to see our world a little differently than most people, to hold on to some sort of child-like wonder over her surroundings. It’s her belief in the possibility of a different world, of a better world. Vivienne Westwood began Get A Life , her online diary, in 2010 with an impassioned post about Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Since then, she has written two or three entries each month, discussing her life in fashion and her involvement with art, politics and the environment. Yoga. I am rewriting my manifesto as I have inexplicably left out a section on Gaia. At yoga, I suddenly had the stunning revelation that Alice in Wonderland, a book written by Lewis Carroll, actually proves Einstein’s theory of relativity. Andreas thinks I might be on to something and says: “Wow, everything is connected.” Honestly, just from reading this book, I can tell that Vivienne Westwood is a wholly genuine person. She's outspoken. She fights for what she believes in. Before I read this book, I think I just kind of figured that fashion designers were just high-class citizens who uphold a bourgeois status, not really socially and culturally aware. Vivienne Westwood shook me to my foundations. At last, I wanted to cry out, a celebrity who recognizes that politicians only care about themselves and who cares about the earth and who will actually do things about the things she cares about. She was a breath of fresh air. What a woman. In the grand scheme of things, I've only just gotten interested in her fashion line, so when I saw the flyer for her new book, I knew I had to buy it and read it. Every morning, I'd get up with a cup of coffee, and I'd read a year from her life. While it's not a comprehensive biography--we have Ian Kelly to thank for that--it is as close as we can get to the inner workings of her mind. She knows she thinks differently than the status quo, and because of that, she sometimes must explain herself. What better way to do that than with a diary-format autobiography?