Fragrance house

Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood traces its roots to 1971, when Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren opened Let it Rock at 430 King’s Road in Chelsea, London. The business moved through successive identities—Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die, SEX, Seditionaries and World’s End—while its provocative clothing and imagery became closely associated with the emergence of punk. In 1981, Westwood and McLaren presented Pirate, their first official collaborative catwalk show, a collection that became a significant reference point in the house’s subsequent aesthetic. Westwood’s design language drew on historical references and English dress traditions, combining tailoring, corsetry and drapery with deliberate reworkings of established conventions. The orb, first used in 1986 to symbolize taking tradition into the future, remains a central house symbol. The label launched Vivienne Westwood MAN in 1996, Anglomania in 1998 and Red Label in 1999; the Victoria and Albert Museum held a retrospective of Westwood’s work in 2004. Latimo S.A. is the parent company of the Vivienne Westwood Group. After Westwood’s death in 2022, Andreas Kronthaler continued the house’s creative direction. Boudoir is a defining fragrance example for the house: launched in 1998 as Westwood’s debut fragrance, it was developed with perfumer Martin Gras of Dragoco.