Time & Perspective Quote by Vivienne Westwood

Westwood’s “I don’t have space” is a sly opening move: a designer’s version of the mic drop. She pretends to be cramped by the margins, then uses that constraint as leverage to go maximal with the claim that “culture is extinct.” The sentence performs what it argues. It refuses the footnotes, the museum placards, the polite tour through influences. Instead it delivers a compressed verdict, as if the evidence has become so abundant - and so ignored - that listing it would be beside the point.

The subtext is less “nothing meaningful is being made” than “the conditions that let culture metabolize conflict into style have been replaced by churn.” Westwood came out of punk, a scene that treated clothing as weaponized commentary: DIY, anti-authority, messy with class politics. “Extinct” channels that punk impatience with institutions that launder rebellion into product. When everything is instantly commodified, “culture” stops being a lived argument and becomes branding: trends without stakes, spectacle without memory.

There’s also a strategic provocation here. Westwood always understood that fashion needs an enemy to sharpen its silhouette. By declaring culture dead, she’s not mourning; she’s trying to reintroduce danger. In late Westwood - increasingly focused on activism, climate, anti-consumerism - the line reads like a diagnosis of an economy that eats its own meanings. The boldness is the point: if extinction is the headline, you either dispute it with proof of life or you admit you’ve been mistaking content for culture.