Vivienne Westwood’s son and granddaughter on anarchy, activism and the “best thing she ever did”

On the opening day of an exhibition for one of the most significant sales in fashion history, I arrive at an inconspicuous, boarded-up Georgian building on Soho’s Berwick Street, the former home of legendary antique lighting firm, W.Sitch & Company; inside it’s a perfectly preserved, wood-pannelled time-warp. I’m here to meet entrepreneur Joseph Corré (who acquired the building a few years ago), son of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and director of the non-profit Vivienne Foundation, and activist and model Cora Corré, Westwood’s granddaughter, who, through the foundation, is steering Westwood’s legacy into the next generation.

Westwood left a permanent punk-shaped stamp on the planet while leading a mission to save it. Her fashion, her impact on new wave and punk and her sublime fuck-the-establishment, save-the-world activism are well documented. Less discussed is her visual art, but that might change with Christie’s’ upcoming auction. Alongside the sale of her personal wardrobe, a series of prints, THE BIG PICTURE – Vivienne’s Playing Cards, are going up for auction. Sold in aid of Greenpeace and organised by the foundation, the collection casts a sharp light on human issues. It was the last project Westwood conceived before she died in December 2022, and was in her words “the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Harriet Lloyd-Smith: Headlines around the Christie’s auction will probably focus on Vivienne’s personal wardrobe, but it’s the graphic playing cards she conceived before she died that she was most passionate about, and something you’ve both been very involved with. How did all this begin?

Joseph Corré: My mother, Cora’s grandmother, was an activist her entire life. Ever since she was a little girl, growing up in the north of England, she had an enormous sense of justice and wanted to make the world a better place.

Before she died, she was having a conversation with her friend, John Sauven [former executive director of Greenpeace UK] about a couple of things that were happening, such as the plans to open up The Democratic Republic of Congo to fossil fuel, oil and gas licencing, which was going to displace so many people.

Cora Corré: I was in a meeting with her in hospital where we brought her up to date on various charities that she funds and that we work with. The Congo licence was going to displace around 3 million, and she was deeply concerned. Then there was another project, an abandoned oil tanker in the Red Sea.

JC: Millions of barrels of oil were just sitting there and it was sinking. So she decided she wanted to raise a significant amount of money for Greenpeace through a graphic project while she was in hospital. There was still some hope that she wasn’t going to die. I don’t think she thought it was the last thing she was going to do.

The thing about Vivienne is she’s a fashion designer and an activist, but as a graphic artist, she was formidable. I mean, she’s the person who invented the anarchy sign in the circle that you see everywhere!

CC: Is that true? I didn’t know that!

JC: Yeah! The first time she showed that anarchy symbol was on the ‘a’ in chaos on the Anarchy Shirt. She was trying to design this shirt for what she considered an urban guerrilla, something that Che Guevara would have worn, but in the city, not in the jungle fighting. She never stopped reading, never stopped informing herself, never stopped getting interested in new ideas.

She was brilliant at prints; she understood how the machines worked, how to print on fabric, how to cut it up and use it, the scale and depth. She was fucking genius!

She decided that she was going to put all of her graphics onto a set of playing cards. While she was in hospital, she signed all of the sheets of paper. She got [British designer] Jeff Banks to help her put it all together.

HL-S: How does the Vivienne Foundation come into this?

JC: Five years before she died, she set up the foundation. It’s a not-for-profit company, rather than a charity because there are rules about charities not being involved in politics. She gave all her creative estate to it, including these playing cards and the final fashion collection she was working on.

HL-S: Why are you so keen to highlight the importance of her graphic art in the auction?

JC: Well, the playing cards happened first – it’s what Vivienne wanted. And then later on, Andreas Kronthaler, [Westwood’s widower], decided he wanted to include her clothes.

CC: She called the playing cards “the best thing she’s ever done.” Each suit of cards aligns with the four pillars of the foundation: climate change, war, human rights and protesting capitalism. The cards are her philosophy, her slogans and everything she cared about. They’re a clear example of what she became known for – utilising her platform and graphics to get the attention of the public.

JC: Clubs is about war, spades is for the motherfuckers (the people destroying the earth), diamonds is about the economy and the rotten financial system, and hearts is about culture and the love of art and humanity.

HL-S: Joe, is there a specific card that stands out to you?

JC: This one is the five of spades. It’s based on this graphic map from NASA and predicts what would happen to the world with a +5 degree change in temperature by the end of the 21st Century. She’s then plastered the “too fast to live too young to die” graphic on top, which comes from when my parents had the Let it Rock shop on King’s Road in the 1970s and they used to have the slogan above the door. So here, she’s giving you information about facts that she’s crystallised into a sentence. It’s such a clear message that’s strikingly attractive. Also, the “I love crap” graphic that she put onto merchandise. It’s the idea of this kind of rampant consumerism telling people to stop buying rubbish. Ironically, it turned out to be one of the best-selling things in her empire!

HL-S: And Cora, is there a playing card that’s significant for you?

CC: For me, it’s this one about war. I was educated about society and the institutions that lead it, and how they profit from war. There’s this innocence as a child of thinking of war as this thing to fight for our security, and that’s very much the narrative pushed by the media. But activism permeated through our family conversations at home. People always say, “Oh, it must have been so glamorous having a grandma like that, did you dress up in all her ball gowns?” That was really not what we did. We had some really lovely times, but I was very fortunate to have these conversations within our family and have a better understanding of the dark circumstances of war.

And this one [picturing Westwood dressed as Margaret Thatcher]: “I GIVE U CRA$H” with the dollar sign. Obviously, I wasn’t around for Thatcher, but it’s the kind of humour and understanding of her platform as a public figure.

JC: It’s in the suit of diamonds, which is about the economy and the rotten financial systems. It shows us a particular snapshot of Vivienne’s life, when she was on the cover of Tatler and that image was posted all over London. I remember when that photograph was taken! I don’t know where it was, but I remember they went to Aquascutum and borrowed all these clothes. She said she had to create this expression on her face of how much she cared as if she was visiting a children’s hospital or something.

HL-S: I think that illustrates how she was part of the system while also going against it. Joe, did you feel empowered by the conversations with your mother growing up?

JC: Cora and my upbringings were very different. But yeah, Vivienne always realised that her status as a fashion designer gave her a platform, which she used to talk about everything else. You rarely saw Vivienne standing up and talking about fashion.

HL-S: What’s the last year been like for you both – looking back into her archive and reflecting on her life?

JC: To be honest, for me, it’s been much more of a pause. Up until she died, it was so busy looking after her. This place has been a real blessing because I’ve been able to come in here, close the door on the world and just get on with something.

CC: Joe lived through all of her career. For me, as a younger person, it’s interesting because people share old videos or interviews of her that would have been something he remembers, but that I hadn’t seen. There’s a lot of footage of her being ridiculed or tested about what she was doing at the time, which is so upsetting, but it just shows how far ahead she was. She was talking about all these issues, which are encompassed and embodied in these cards and her graphics, far before it was fashionable.

HL-S: Have you learnt anything new about your grandmother during this process?

CC: So much! And I’m always learning. She was so much more than a fashion designer. I think it’s sad, but through her passing, people have finally recognised that. She was someone with a really amazing heart, and that showed through her activism and her prints.

JC: I miss her voice, I have to say.

CC: I wish she was here right now.

JC: I don’t hear other people talking about these important issues. I miss her presence in that sense. She was like one of our champions or heroes who was always there to call people out to say what needed to be said. I mean, I look at this political campaign for this election – nobody’s saying anything! It leaves room for people like Nigel Farage, they’ve created a space for someone like him, who can say the easiest, most stupid things.

CC: They gravitate towards him because he’s actually saying something or not treading a tightrope.

JC: Vivienne would have torn him to shreds in a sentence!

CC: I’m wearing the wrong coat today, but I usually have all these badges of her graphics that have slogans like “politicians are criminals” and “buy less, choose well”. It feels like people are finally listening in a mass consumer culture.

HL-S: She seemed to have a knack for balancing gut-punch statements with slower-burn activism.

CC: To see her as an artist and to see this project be auctioned off, as she wanted, is super special. In the last few years of her life, especially in lockdown, she made all this art which is yet to be seen. It was something she was so excited about.

HL-S: It sounds like the beginning of a new chapter.

CC: Yes, the beginning of the things she really loved in the last five years. It’s the end of a chapter but it’s also the start of being able to show the works and graphics and prints and clothes that she really cared about, raising funds for the organisations she cared about.