Cycling UK Forum

I note this icon of punk chic has passed. Among her great achievements for the movement were



1.rebelling by forsaking underwear on special occasions
2.accepting a knighthood and a peerage
3.selling radical fashion in inner-city Kings Road, the heart of working class London.
4.designing clothes for the elite ,including Teresa May

A true rebel.

No lycra, but one of us!

ivienne Westwood today led tributes to a “beautiful and dedicated” fashion buyer who was killed when her bike was hit by a lorry.

Federica Baldassa, 26, was knocked down by a Greggs delivery truck near Bloomsbury Square as she cycled home on Friday evening.

Italian-born Ms Baldassa moved to London last year to pursue her dream of working in the British fashion industry.

Sleb culture - what a waste of anyone's attention and interest. I mean! We could be thinking about interesting cycling journeys and exciting shiny bike gubbins instead!

Currently I have an obsession with Wera tools and go about the web looking at the many weird variants of this too-type and that. I have a sneaking suspicion that I've been seduced by a tool-sleb.

Make another wooden woodworking plane, I will. This is a good antidote to thinking about famous (or infamous) things of no use whatsoever, out there in the wide world of medialand. Wooden plane making requires one's full attention for many hours, see?

Cugel

An hour spent planing wood is sixty scintillating minutes of mindful manual manipulation.My grandad had planes set by blocks, a chiv and an adze.A pattern maker for De Havillands.

mumbojumbo wrote: ↑30 Dec 2022, 8:55pm An hour spent planing wood is sixty scintillating minutes of mindful manual manipulation.My grandad had planes set by blocks, a chiv and an adze.A pattern maker for De Havillands.

The pattern makers - perhaps the epitome of woodworking skills collected in one trade/craft. I once read a very interesting article somewhere (pre-web, though) that gave a great insight into pattern makers and their value to a host of manufacturing & inventing concerns. They did a lot more than make real wooden 3D patterns from tech drawings. Their observations concerning the topology of what they were asked to construct often revealed a host of issues about the design that the blueprint and its maker were completely unaware of. In many ways, the pattern makers were also the final design-refiners.

Myself, I enjoy the plane making, which could be done from a blueprint but in practice is done from a mental "picture" of the functions required straight into the woodworking on chunks o' wood. Mistakes occur but learning from them whilst making them is worth so much more than slavishly following a blueprint and "getting it right first time". The blueprint is often inadequate and only the real thing made via the mistakes eventually gets to the actually right thing.

***********
Fashionable clothes .... what makes them "the right thing"? One suspects: a high return of profit & fame for the designer/maker, nothing much for the user. There's furniture like that too! And some bikes!!

Cugel

mumbojumbo wrote: ↑30 Dec 2022, 7:09am I note this icon of punk chic has passed. Among her great achievements for the movement were



1.rebelling by forsaking underwear on special occasions
2.accepting a knighthood and a peerage
3.selling radical fashion in inner-city Kings Road, the heart of working class London.
4.designing clothes for the elite ,including Teresa May

A true rebel.

Don't forget she posed as was it thatcher dressed up in dress suit thatcher had bought from or made by Westwood possibly for her, but hadn't received yet. She was photographed in that getup and made up to look a bit like thatcher for a magazine cover. Thatcher certainly never wore the clothes in public and might never have got them at all.

I suppose she added to the rich variety of life, but I never liked a single thing that she made.

People are rarely as black and white as the OP would suggest, and Westwood certainly added some colour. I have no interest in fashion, or punk, I am interested in some of campaigns she has been an outspoken activist for. I don't have to agree with everything she's said and done, from the little I know she seems to have remained true to herself, whilst supporting some good causes and being successful in business. The World would be a better place with more like her.

She never made anything in my size.

PH wrote: ↑31 Dec 2022, 10:43am People are rarely as black and white as the OP would suggest, and Westwood certainly added some colour. I have no interest in fashion, or punk, I am interested in some of campaigns she has been an outspoken activist for. I don't have to agree with everything she's said and done, from the little I know she seems to have remained true to herself, whilst supporting some good causes and being successful in business. The World would be a better place with more like her.

I agree with that.

pwa wrote: ↑31 Dec 2022, 9:31am I suppose she added to the rich variety of life, but I never liked a single thing that she made.

Really?

She made a whole range of clothing for regular (well regularly wealthy), not just the extreme and avant gardé Fashion Show work which very deliberately pushes boundaries from all designers.

https://www.viviennewestwood.com/en/women/clothing/

mumbojumbo wrote: ↑30 Dec 2022, 7:09am I note this icon of punk chic has passed. Among her great achievements for the movement were



1.rebelling by forsaking underwear on special occasions
2.accepting a knighthood and a peerage
3.selling radical fashion in inner-city Kings Road, the heart of working class London.
4.designing clothes for the elite ,including Teresa May

A true rebel.

She was awarded an OBE and a DBE, while accepting them could be said to be joining the establishment then are not a knighthood or a peerage.
The Kings Road was was very different in the 60s and 70s when her and Malcolm McClaren set up their shop there. It was certainly frequented by working class people.
There are shops bearing her name in various British towns and cities, and across the world, I am sure the majority of customers are not "the elite".

You fail to mention her dodgy offshore tax avoidance schemes, she rebelled against the UK tax regime!

Bonefishblues wrote: ↑31 Dec 2022, 12:00pm

pwa wrote: ↑31 Dec 2022, 9:31am I suppose she added to the rich variety of life, but I never liked a single thing that she made.

Really?

She made a whole range of clothing for regular (well regularly wealthy), not just the extreme and avant gardé Fashion Show work which very deliberately pushes boundaries from all designers.

https://www.viviennewestwood.com/en/women/clothing/

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but to me those garments are all ugly. She had a successful career, so others must have a different aesthetic sense.

Accused
https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/vivienn ... -avoidance

A bit like a Tartan Google,or Top Shop with free safety pins.