Vivienne Westwood

Dame of the British Empire Vivienne Westwood is best known for her provocative SEX/Seditionaries boutique on Kings Road, and then perhaps her runway shows. Her shoes recently got a hit of mass-market retail power when she did a limited edition collection for a partnership including Nine West, Macy's and Vogue. Westwood was comparatively reserved in that work, but for other venues, her bulbous, curving platform soles sometimes grow to NBA-qualifying heights. This is the first book to gather Westwood's shoe designs, every one of them--140 examples, including the infamous platform that felled Naomi Campbell--from 1973 to the present day. Newly commissioned color photography documents each model, and detailed reporting explains their history, laying bare the designer's sources of inspiration and working practices. Vivienne Westwood Shoes includes a biography and chronology of the designer's life and work, most recently her 25th year of runway shows, a first major retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and designs for the rich and famous--from Tracey Emin to Cameron Diaz. It's essential reading and window-shopping for all fashion hounds, shoe fetishists and fans of the Queen of British design, who is at once the one of the greatest living British fashion designers and the most talked-about.