She is fabulous, fabulous with integrity, and as vocal and visible as ever

She leads Scotland’s premier design museum, the V&A Dundee. But the inspiration behind Leonie Bell’s love of design was Dame Vivienne Westwood. With her late husband Malcolm Mclaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, she propelled punk into fashion. Leonie, who was a teenager at that seminal moment in youth culture, said of the now 79-year-old: “She is fabulous, but fabulous with integrity. She caught my attention because of her ability to subvert the traditional and the conventional.

“As a teenager I was aware of her relationship to punk, but also of her amazing ability to be true to textile and dress-making principles; the way she could deeply subvert and create something that felt very new from convention and traditional in an uncompromising way.

“I love that she is this incredibly strong figure that over the decades has really endured. I just love that she is as noisy, vocal, and visible as she ever was; that she is ageing with rebellion and grace.

“Westwood transcends fashion. She does her own thing. We need to see more women that keep working, keep creating, and keep expressing their views in really powerful ways; from all walks of life and from all decades in their lives.” Leonie, whose daughters are 18, 15 and 11, first splashed out on Westwood garments in a sale at the designer’s Princes Square store in Glasgow.

She revealed: “I spent £200 on an incredible, bright orange and burnt orange blouse, and a shirt with enormous balloon sleeves.

“I loved the volume, the colour, and the texture. I couldn’t afford them. That was 18 years ago and I still treat them as my most special items of clothing today.”

Leonie said Westwood was not just about style and culture, but “sustainability”. She added: “I hope my kids will be wearing my Westwood designs. They are timeless and endure.” The museum chief is proud to have a Westwood design on display at the V&A that celebrates Scottish tartan and tweed.

She added: “It is important to take a moment to mark International Women’s Day. “I will raise a toast to Vivienne Westwood, and to my mother and my daughters and all the women in my life who are most influential and closest to me.”

But she said all women should look back on this pandemic year and be proud: “It is a day when women everywhere should look back and think about what they have accomplished.”