Vivienne Westwood
Punk-influenced prestige from a provocateur.
Vivienne Westwood launched her fashion house in London in 1981 and introduced fragrance as a natural extension of her punk-influenced, historically referential aesthetic. The designer herself was a figure of deliberate contradiction—corsets and crinolines worn as protest, British heritage weaponized against British conservatism—and the fragrances carry some of that irreverence. Boudoir (1998) became the most critically recognized release: a dark, animalic floral composed by Annie Buzantian that distilled the Westwood sensibility into an unapologetically sensual feminine. Anglomania and Libertine extended the catalog through the 2000s. Today the brand's fragrance licenses are managed by Coty, as with many designer houses, which brings the practical benefits of wide distribution alongside the inevitable trade-off of creative distance. The fragrances remain positioned at prestige price points, carried in department stores internationally. Westwood died in 2022, and the house she built continues under Andreas Kronthaler's creative direction.
DNA over time
Each column is an era. Each colored band shows that family’s share of accord weight across every perfume the house released in that window. Bigger band = the house leaned harder on that family.
