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Daily Inspiration Quote by Vivienne Westwood

"Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well"

About this Quote

Westwood doesn’t defend fashion by pretending it’s noble; she defends it by insisting it’s pleasurable, then refusing to apologize for that. “Life-enhancing” is doing double duty here: it elevates clothes from frivolous consumption to a daily technology of mood, identity, and power. She’s arguing that the things we dismiss as “surface” are often the very surfaces through which we live - how we’re read, how we belong, how we provoke.

The sly move is the clause “like everything that gives pleasure.” Westwood links fashion to the entire ecosystem of human enjoyment - art, sex, food, music - and smuggles in an ethic: pleasure isn’t automatically suspect. In a culture trained to see enjoyment as indulgence and seriousness as virtue, she flips the moral hierarchy. If it gives pleasure, it deserves craft. “Worth doing well” is a subtle rebuke to fast-fashion apathy and trend-chasing. She’s not praising shopping; she’s praising design: intention, construction, intelligence.

Context matters because Westwood’s career was built on turning style into argument. From punk’s DIY aggression to later historical tailoring, she treated clothing as a public-facing manifesto. That makes this line less like a pep talk and more like a standard: if fashion is going to take up time, labor, and resources, it should be done with imagination and responsibility. The subtext: don’t sneer at fashion - demand more from it.

Quote Details

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Source
Later attribution: Women Know Everything! (Karen Weekes, 2007) modern compilationISBN: 9781594741692 · ID: nTKgWEBhBeoC
Text match: 94.44%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... Fashion is very important . It is life - enhancing and , like everything that gives pleasure , it is worth doing well . -VIVIENNE WESTWOOD ( 1941- ) ENGLISH FASHION DESIGNER " FATHERS " I wanted him to cherish and approve 153 FASHION ...
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Westwood, Vivienne. (2026, March 21). Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/fashion-is-very-important-it-is-life-enhancing-23217/

Chicago Style
Westwood, Vivienne. "Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well." FixQuotes. March 21, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/fashion-is-very-important-it-is-life-enhancing-23217/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well." FixQuotes, 21 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/fashion-is-very-important-it-is-life-enhancing-23217/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2026.

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About the Author

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Vivienne Westwood (April 8, 1941 - December 29, 2022) was a Designer from England.

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