Seeing the swathe of superlatives wheeled out about Vivienne Westwood after her death last year at the age of 81, it felt for a moment like Elizabeth the Great had died all over again. Acolytes from Victoria Beckham to Sadiq Khan delivered their fawning tributes – my favourite was from Bella Hadid, who lamented the loss of ‘the most epic human being that has walked this earth.’ But the two women, Queen Elizabeth and Westwood, were as different as chalk and cheesecloth. The designer was a graceless, grasping woman, with an opinion – always wrong – about everything. No matter how much she complained and explained, she never convinced me that she was anything more than a hyped-up hustler.
Being greedy and being stingy often go together; stinginess is the halitosis of the soul
Westwood was a hypocrite. At her 2013-14 runway show the audience found her Climate Revolution manifesto printed on the back of the show’s production notes.
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