For well over three decades Vivienne Westwood, along with her one-time partner Malcolm McLaren, has been at the centre of British fashion and one of its most inventive and influential designers. Westwood’s career in fashion was galvanised by McLaren and together they launched memorable fashion moments, including Punk in the early 1970s and later their Pirates collection. McLaren and Westwood conducted a design relationship between 1971 and 1983. In 1990 and again in 1991 Vivienne Westwood was named British Designer of the Year; she has also received an OBE.

Westwood’s unique mix of practicality and inventiveness, her preoccupation with silhouette and the manner in which she manipulates fabrics result in dynamic fashion. Westwood herself once said, 'You have a much better life if you wear impressive clothes.’

This jacket hails from the Witches collection of autumn/winter 1983, marking Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s final collaboration. It came following a trip to America to meet Keith Haring, whose fluorescent, graffiti-inspired designs would feature on a number of the pieces. The collection was influenced by Haring’s ‘magical, esoteric sign language’ (which also inspired its eerie name) and early-1980s American hip-hop culture. McLaren at the time was greatly interested by hip-hop; Witches followed only months after the release of his solo album Duck Rock (which featured artwork by Haring), a milestone in the popularisation of hip-hop in the UK. Witches was shown on the catwalk accompanied by strobe lighting, to give a dislocating, freeze-frame effect to the models, and a soundtrack of rap music.