Vivienne Westwood: And long may she reign...

On the eve of a major retrospective, the doyenne of British fashion is having a 'moment'. But she's not one for talking hemlines - the Queen, opera and politics are on her mind. Susannah Frankel meets the very opinionated Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood - as anyone who has spent any time with her will know - could hardly be described as lacking an opinion. Her subject matter ranges from the brilliant to the banal, and from the playfully provocative to the plain outrageous. Her dialogue comprises impressionistic snatches of history, politics, literature, art and human interest, all rolled into one, snatched from the books she reads constantly and the people she admires. Westwood has at least two, maybe even three ideas on the go concurrently. The former schoolteacher's sense of authority is laced with a beguiling, soft Derbyshire lilt. It is a powerfully persuasive combination, and one that might convert even her greatest detractors.

Here she is on Tony Blair: "I'm very, very anti Tony Blair. I think he's as big a monster as Margaret Thatcher ever was. Yeah, I think he's caused as many deaths as her, what with his behaviour."

And on religion: "Anybody who's religious is a nutcase. No, they're lunatic. You know Philip Larkin, I once heard him quoted on the radio. He said that when he read the Bible, he couldn't imagine how even one person in the world could believe that crap."

And she's not overly keen on America, either: "Let's make sure America gets it all and nobody else," she taunts. "Because it's America's right, being the country that leads, that carries the fucking freedom torch..." At this point she is practically spitting with contempt.

We meet in her south-London studio, and she is dressed, as always, in her own designs: a sweater and knitted skirt, knee-high socks and battered old slippers. She's off-duty, otherwise she would be in her signature towering shoes. "You should wear heels," she says, "because it does help your proportions. I'm not joking. One of the best things about my work is that I have the most incredible clothes to wear."

Whichever way you choose to look at it, it's small wonder that Westwood is labelled eccentric. She is as at home discussing the court of Versailles - a constant source of inspiration - as she is the vegetable soup she got up early this morning to make for her dinner. "I love cooking," she says. "I do it a lot." But just when you're thinking that you are with fashion's answer to the Domestic Goddess, she adds: "Don't let me near a washing-machine. I hate washing."

Today, her conversation turns quickly to the Queen. It might come as some surprise that Westwood, the fashion force behind The Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen", and the woman who twirled knickerless for the paparazzi outside Buckingham Palace in 1992 when she received her OBE, is having lunch with the former object of her disdain the day after we meet. She is one out of 180 "important women" invited to do so.

"What do I think of the Queen?" she wonders. "Well, I'm against nationalism, I think it's horrible, and I'm a bit doubtful about anything that promotes it, but I don't see any reason for getting rid of her. I think she should have a certain lifestyle and a certain amount of money... For a long time, the Queen had to pretend to have the same middle-class values as the rest of us. As a child, I collected pictures of Princess Anne and Prince Charles sitting on the lawn with the corgis, just like Doris and Sid from Neasden. I criticised them for that."

This is something of an understatement, as it turns out. At the height of her notoriety - which happened to coincide with the grooming of the young Princess of Wales into a global fashion icon, Westwood told The Sun: "I don't know that I'd like to design clothes for the Princess of Wales. I'm against all royalty. Diana to me is just lamb dressed as mutton. What would I dress her in? Probably a potato sack. I wish royalty would corrode away, because I'm against all leaders and authority that prevent people grabbing the potential they were born with..."

Westwood likes nothing better than a heated debate, but admits: "I'm very easy to persuade. I don't always stick to my point of view. I can be influenced by somebody if they're saying something that opens my eyes and ears. After punk rock, I had to decide what my next career move would be. I had to decide whether I would continue in fashion. I didn't know if I wanted to be a designer then. I was more interested in confronting the Establishment.

"It was very naive, of course, and very romantic. We were going to be these heroes who looked like urban guerrillas. And one of the slogans we had was, "Beneath the paving stones lies the beach" [Sous les pavés, la plage]. It was this famous Situationist thing. And I thought it was marvellous because, of course, first you're thinking of throwing stones, of stopping this terrible machine from causing all this misery. But when you think it all through, once you've broken everything up, you're on the beach." She pauses for breath. "And I thought to myself, well, who on earth wants to live on the beach?"

Not Vivienne Westwood, clearly, although she would cut quite a dash.

It's more than 30 years now since she and Malcolm McLaren dressed the punk movement, and high time for a reassessment of her work. On 1 April, the Victoria & Albert Museum launches its major retrospective on the designer, and has published an accompanying book, illustrated with some of the most extraordinary images from Westwood's personal archive: the notorious Tatler cover, by Michael Roberts, in which she posed as Thatcher; a second and hitherto unpublished image by Roberts of feminist-baiting Westwood, her head in a bell jar; Westwood and her husband, Andreas Kronthaler, photographed nude in the manner of a grand-master painting by Annie Leibovitz...

Despite the newspaper stories claiming otherwise, both museum and subject are eager to confirm that it has been a mutually happy experience. "There was some stupid story," says Westwood, "this stupid woman saying that she'd heard I wasn't happy. I'm 100 per cent happy. They've given me everything I've wanted all along. It's an incredible commitment from them and I'm extremely honoured."

"Vivienne is an inventor," says Claire Wilcox, curator of the V&A show. Indeed, she gave the world not only the uniform of punk but also Pirates (1979), which triggered the New Romantic movement; Savages (1982) Western fashion's first foray into asymmetrical layering; and Buffalo Girls (also 1982), inspired by Latin American Indians and featuring layers of skirts and petticoats, bowler hats worn with headscarves, and bras worn over blouses - underwear-as outerwear as it is known today. Only very few fashion designers have changed the way women, and, indeed, men, dress. Vivienne Westwood - along with Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent - is one.

And like Chanel, Westwood had humble origins. She was born Vivienne Isabel Swire, in Glossop, Derbyshire, on 8 April 1941. Her father came from a long line of cobblers, her mother worked in the local cotton mills. "I lived in an area that had grown up during the Industrial Revolution. I didn't even know about art galleries until I was 17. I'd never seen an art book. I'd never been to the theatre. But I could sense from an early age that I was less conservative than my parents."

Today, Westwood is passionate about the arts. Her conversation is littered with references to her cultural heroes, Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell in particular. "I don't really like Joseph Conrad, but he believed in decorum and he was always immaculately and conservatively dressed. He believed that society was a sort of crust, and that behaviour was terribly important, and that if people didn't have this set decorum, this mode of communication, they were beasts. It was like a lava crust, and if you broke it you'd go down to the hellfire. And I believe that. You have to behave nicely to people, even if it is hypocritical."

When she was 17, her parents bought a post office and moved south, to Harrow in Middlesex. After working in a factory for a short while, Westwood went to teacher-training college, and then taught for a year ("I always liked the naughty ones") before marrying Derek Westwood and having her first child, Ben. The marriage lasted three years, with Westwood continuing to teach while making her own jewellery, which she sold on a stall in Portobello Road. At around this time, she met Malcolm McLaren, then called Malcolm Edwards, and became pregnant with her second son, Joseph (who now runs Agent Provocateur with his wife.) In 1971, McLaren decided to open a shop and Westwood filled it. "I intended to go to university, but I started to help Malcolm..." And the rest is history.

Vivienne Westwood is the first to admit that her relationships with men have been formative in creative terms. And her views on women and their role in society are notorious. "I think women can be icons of beauty, hourglasses of femininity, teetering along on high heels and everything. And they should play on their vulnerability and cry or whatever to get their own way."

Her partnership with McLaren, however significant, pales into insignificance alongside the one that she now enjoys with her husband, the aforementioned Kronthaler. They met when he was a student and she a teacher (he is 25 years her junior), and have lived and worked together since. He is clearly hugely instrumental in the design process. Westwood credits the signature overblown ballgown to Kronthaler, and there is at least one look in the exhibition catalogue that is attributed entirely to him. They have been together for "a good 15 years", but when Westwood talks about him, her eyes light up and she positively quivers with the excitement of it all.

"First of all, he's a very gentle person," she says. "I've never quarrelled with him. We once had a disagreement when we left an opera and I didn't like it, and he was really angry. He said people put so much into it and you can't just be so condemning. But I don't like opera much. I don't want anyone to think I'm an opera fan because I'm not. I think it's kitsch and ridiculous..." In particular, she adds, "I can't stand Verdi".

When the Kronthalers aren't going to galleries or the theatre, "Andreas really likes home life. He loves my cooking. But I shouldn't talk about domestic bliss too much. I'm a person who would never stop anybody doing what they wanted. He's free to do what he wants. I don't worry if he's not home at 3am, or doesn't come home all night. He usually goes on holiday with a friend because I don't like being in the sun. I take the chance to stay at home and read."

When pressed, Westwood reluctantly admits that their relationship is not entirely perfect: "He watches TV almost every night, and I don't think he should. I've watched it twice since he got it. I saw the Twin Towers coming down over and over again, and I saw the Michael Jackson interview because he thought I'd be interested in that. And I was. Well, he's someone I've heard of. I've never heard of most people. I've no idea who they are these people, this Jordan. No idea."

Vivienne Westwood will be 63 next month. Time may have moderated her ideals where the turning over of tradition is concerned, but she remains passionate and entirely original in her attitude to both life and work. "I sound off about all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean that I'm not absolutely sincere. I know my knowledge isn't great enough. I don't have enough reading inside me, nobody does. But I say those things because nobody else is saying them. I am proud of myself. I'm always astonished by what I do, by the connection between me and it. I certainly think that people wouldn't look the way they look or think about clothes in the same way if I had never lived."

Vivienne Westwood is, at this point, nothing short of radiant. The following day, her press office forwards an e-mail "just because Vivienne would like to clarify a few things". As always, Westwood is not one to miss an opportunity to pour forth on élitism, Marxism, nationalism and the French Revolution. She also, however, wants us all to know that "at night, he [Andreas] often reads aloud to me".

Vivienne Westwood: 34 Years In Fashion, V&A, Cromwell Road, London SW7 (020-7942 2000), 1 April to 11 July. The book, 'Vivienne Westwood', is published by V&A Publications (£30)