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I would like to be the last person on Earth

Author: 
Amy Key

Vivienne Westwood, a cento

 

The garment should say: ‘I am this’

A story of itself

It’s just so creative to put a sentence together

Greet me by ‘how lovely you are’ rather than ‘I like your hat’

I haven’t thought properly about dying

But if I were to write anything on my tombstone

It would be ‘The only revolution is culture’

Every time I speak to someone, I assume they understand

How easy it would have been not to lead this life

I could have been a schoolteacher

What you are given for free should not be owned

Love affairs go a long way to helping life pass you by

Behave according to the clothes

Forget yourself and you will become who you are

I am the centre of my look, like Chanel was

Punk was kids having a great time, but for what? I don’t know

If I go into a room and see Pamela Anderson looking incredible

I’m going to be delighted

The sun makes my skin itch when I’m on a bicycle

A nude is never really naked

I know exactly what I would like my legacy to be

Form is always becoming something else

I design for a world that doesn’t exist, you know, one like this but better

Note: phrases from interviews with Vivienne Westwood from Interview Magazine, Dazed, Vogue Italia, www.showstudio.com and quotes from Westwood included in Vivienne Westwood – An Unfashionable life by Jane Mulvagh, published by Harper Collins (2004 edition).

Commissioned by the National Poetry Library and the Centre for New and International Writing at the University of Liverpool, for the ‘Poets in Vogue’ exhibition, 2023.

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