Top 210 Quotes & Sayings by Vivienne Westwood

We are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much.

The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas.

All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.

There is so much that people take for granted.

It's true the punk fashion itself was iconographic: rips and dirt, safety pins, zips, slogans, and hairstyles. These motifs were so iconic in themselves - motifs of rebellion.

I can't think without my glasses.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody's interested in somebody who's just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing - there is no latest thing. It's all rubbish.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline... because you need to be alone to find out anything.

There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that's rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

I think I've got wiser.

I just use fashion as an excuse to talk about politics. Because I'm a fashion designer, it gives me a voice, which is really good.

We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.

Home, more than anything, means warmth and bed.

Britishness is just a way of putting things together and a certain don't care attitude about clothes. You don't care, you just do it and it looks great.

It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don't see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

The thing that makes my clothes really different is that, number one, they are really great designs; they're not tacky; they are very professional; the design is made from lots of decisions.

I didn't do anything at the Queen, whom I admire.

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn't have anything. It's influenced the way I look at the world.

Personally I'm not a feminist, as I can't stand puritans.

My beauty secret is absolutely no sun.

Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it's popular, it's not culture.

Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth's treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply.

I think dress, hairstyle and make-up are the crucial factors in projecting an attractive persona and give one the chance to enhance one's best physical features.

There's nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.

If you're too big to fit into fashion, then you just have to do your own fashion.

I was so upset with what was going on in the world. I just couldn't stand the idea of being people tortured and that we even had such a thing as war. I hated the older generation, who had not done anything about it. Punk was a call-to-arms for me.

I've got a real sense of three-dimensional geometry. I can look at a flat piece of fabric and know that if I put a slit in it and make some fabric travel around a square, then when you lift it up it will drape in a certain way, and I can feel how that will happen.

I'll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.

I don't care if you get up in the morning and don't wash, don't put any make-up on, don't do your hair, even, but you have to have clothes if you want to look different.

I do not approve of museums trying just to get people to come in. Whistler was very, very clear on this.

I don't have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I'm left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

I was a punk before it got its name. I had that hairstyle and purple lipstick.

I eat only vegetables and fruit, and to me it's the most aspirational diet because it's so easy. It's quite simple, the cooking I do.

The main message of Climate Revolution is that climate change is caused by the rotten financial system we've got, designed to create poverty and rip off any profits for a small amount of rich people. Meanwhile, it destroys the earth.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

We based the look on rock 'n roll right from the beginning.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What's happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It's going to make the situation worse.

I am attracted to people who make this effort in knowing what suits them - they are individual and stylish.

I don't follow politics much.

The main message we want to get out there is that climate change is caused by the rotten economic system.

I am always trying to find fabrics that are more friendly to the environment - working with Virgin Atlantic, they managed to research into this and find more eco fabrics.

Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.

You've got to invest in the world, you've got to read, you've got to go to art galleries, you've got to find out the names of plants. You've got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We're amazing people.

You have a more interesting life if you wear impressive clothes.

I wish you didn't have to design so often. Try to do quality and cut down on quantity. I think fashion is very, very important.

I talk to fashion designers and say I want some money to save the rainforest, and they say, 'Oh, I agree with you completely Vivienne. Yes, climate change, it's definitely happening,' but they don't feel that they can do anything about it; they don't even think 'Well let's stop it!'

I've always felt heroic about my life... As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn't think that was the case at all. My parents didn't treat me as a girl.

I didn't consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.

Don't just eat McDonald's, get something a bit better. Eat a salad. That's what fashion is. It's something that is a bit better.

People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much.

I do think we're an endangered species. But that we do have a plan to save the rainforest.

I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could. Advertising.

I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn't realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left.

Buy less. Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity. Everybody's buying far too many clothes.

What I'm always trying to say to the consumer is: buy less, choose well, make it last.

We wanted to step off our island and add the color of the third world. We got gold cigarette paper and stuck it around our teeth. We really did look like pirates and dressed to look the part.

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don't understand.

My son has followed fashion since he was a punk. He and I agree that fashion is about sex.