Vivienne Westwood

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.

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

However, because Britain is young and exciting, I did show my second line here once or twice.

I am in my own head most of the time.

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.

If you wear clothes that dont suit you youre a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better.

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

My children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.

Shoes must have very high heels and platforms to put womens beauty on a pedestal.

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.

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.

I don't feel very comfortable defending my fashion except to say that people don't have to buy it. You do have to consume. You have to live. If you've got the money to be able to afford it, then it's really good to buy something from me, but don't buy too much.

It's a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

If you wear clothes that don't suit you, you're a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better.

I don't watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched 'The King's Speech' on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.

I was still interested in the youth rebellion but never-the-less I stopped being a victim. Stopped trying to attack the establishment realizing that it takes too much of your energy.

I'm the proof - you can't throw away tradition.

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

I don't care how many beauty treatments you have, I don't care which bag you're carrying - you have to have a dress.

We moved into the back, made it into a little 50s sitting room and started to sell the records. We had an immediate success. For one thing, these Teddy Boys were thrilled to buy the records.

It is extremely difficult to say how long the process actually took to finally achieve my fragrance, Boudoir, because there was a lot of time waiting around for other people.

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.

I've always had my own access to the public, because I started off making my clothes for a little shop, and so I've always had people buying them. I could always sell a few, even if I couldn't sell a lot, and somehow my business grew because people happened to like it. I'm in a fortunate position.

I'm a fashion designer and people think, what do I know?

I always tried to do things by example, even though I was not a very good mother regarding routines and family life.

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.

Fashion has become so whatever. I don't think there are any stones left to unturn.

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don't notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

My beauty secret is absolutely no sun.

The bravery shown by Azza Suleiman who dared to stand up for another woman who was being beaten, and paid a heavy price in doing so, is both awe-inspiring and humbling.

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

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.

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.

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.

My fashion advice is to have a flattering mirror & then forget about it.

Fashion is life-enhancing, and I think it's a lovely, generous thing to do for other people.

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

When we started to do punk, we put all of these things together to create the look of an urban guerrilla - a rebel.

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'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 used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who's spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit.

I was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle.

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

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.

Liverpool people are famous for liking clothes and fashion; they are very social and lively people, and we know that they like clothes.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

When I was a little girl you used to learn to sew all the holes in things, darning socks, but nobody mends things anymore.

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

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

I think that feminists have definitely underestimated the role that women have had historically. I think I would be insecure if I were to be a man; there's so much pressure on you.

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

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

I have certain signatures, certain cutting principles. It could be a raw-edged seam; it could be leaving the lining of sheepskin exposed so it's not perfectly finished. I invent new ways to do it, but the end goal is always the same.

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

I'm always attracted to people who interest me. They've got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They're interested in people.

In history people dressed much better than we do today.

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

I really don't like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they're horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They'd better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

I didn't want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn't like it. I always wanted to do other things.

Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.

I don't notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

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.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It's always sexy, and it's always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

My clothes are very popular in Japan.

When I first saw a picture of the crucifixion, I lost respect for my parents. I suddenly realised that this is what the adult world is like - full of cruelty and hypocrisy.

The muscular, athletic type is not representative of the human race, who are varied in their physique.

Shoes must have very high heels and platforms to put women's beauty on a pedestal.

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.

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

Real art has been... what's the word? Kidnapped? No, that's not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

I think it's important to vote.

The last people with any ideas are young people.

Home, more than anything, means warmth and bed.

If you saw Queen Elizabeth it would be amazing, she came from another planet. She was so attractive in what she was wearing.

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

Even though it was the 70s, we found old stocks of clothes that had never been worn from the 50s and took them apart. I started to teach myself how to make clothes from that kind of formula.

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'm not sure what I think about current fashion, though. A few years ago, I would have said it's really, really bad and you hardly ever see anybody looking good. There must be some very good designers in the world.

I have too much product, and I'm trying to rein it in and sell more of my main collection. I wish you didn't have to design so often; it would be good if you could keep on selling the same things for a few years and not have to do new things all the time.

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.

The best night of my life was watching the Japanese Noh theater. I've only seen it once, but even saying it now, I think, 'How can I ever have this experience again?' It was so mesmerizing, so complicated and so primordial; I could not believe it.

I'm frugal. I'm not a very acquisitive woman. I never waste food. If you prepare your own food, you engage with the world, it tastes alive. It tastes good.

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

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.

My clothes have always got a very strong dynamic rapport with the body - they are very body conscious, they help you to look glamorous, more hourglass, more woman.

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

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.

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

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.

Women fight for democracy and engage in the world. But they shouldn't try and be copying men and be masculine; they should anchor on the home and build on those fundamentals.

I think it is a good thing to buy less and choose well - it's good for the environment and to be fair it's also good for me because my clothes are quite expensive.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make - and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn't quite work.

Everybody should have a fair deal; everybody should have the chance to life in this world. If we were evolved as human beings, we would hopefully be able to alleviate suffering in the world.

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

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

Every time I have to look up a word in the dictionary, I'm delighted.

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.