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And they say you get nicer as you get older ... Well, fashion's punk godmother Vivienne Westwood shows no sign of sheathing those famous claws. Sweeping into the Harper's Bazaar party for Women in Theatre at the Ivy Club this week, she headed for writer Stephanie Theobald. "I don't like your novels," said Viv, who had been sent an advance copy of A Partial Indulgence, Theobald's exposé of the London art market. "And this one is like vomit coming at you off the page, actually. I mean ... I really hate your writing." Moments later she was at it again. Spotting actor Alex Jennings, who played the Prince of Wales in The Queen, she bellowed: "That was an absolutely terrible film ..."
Well, bring it on. The great British eccentric is refusing to go gently into that good night. At 67, Westwood still cuts an extraordinary figure with orange hair, corpse-white make-up and drawn-on red eyebrows - part Elizabeth I, part Snow Queen of Narnia. She's still wearing her favourite drop-crotch trousers and 9in-high lace-up boots. Hardly surprising when she wore an "urban guerrilla's cap" to the palace to be made a dame in 2006. (For her OBE ceremony she was photographed in a transparent dress, sans knickers.)
London specialises in seniors with style. Raucous painter Lucian Freud, 86, rarely spends a night at home. Tales abound of how he skated on the lake at Sting's country pile before Christmas, or danced younger revellers off the floor at Annabel's.
Artist and stylist Molly Parkin is running a disco at 76 (The Parkin Lot, Tuesdays at Soho's The Green Carnation). Meanwhile, David Hockney, 71, loves Twitter (he's just conducted an interview with the Tate on it).
Recently I saw Doris Lessing, 80 this year, at the opera in the most fantastic print shift dress. And Diana Athill, 91, has just won the Costa Book Award for her memoir, Somewhere Towards the End, which casts a frank light on the sex life of women after the age of 60.
Seniors with style don't do platitudes or small talk. Often, like Westwood, they are just thrillingly, breathtakingly rude. But we love them because they give us hope that maybe it won't all end in Ovaltine and carpet slippers. Actor, Leslie Phillips, 85, is still a champion flirt while Freud's romantic back catalogue defies belief.
Westwood, as ever, pushes the boundaries further. She is married to a bisexual man 25 years younger. It's an open relationship (she loathes jealousy) but he comes home anyway.
The flesh may weaken but our disgraceful seniors understand that it's the life of the mind that is genuinely subversive in the end. And that means they'll never just be grey-haired pensioners.
Recently Westwood cycled through Clapham in a cape and looped skirt. "These little kids - well, teenagers - called out after me, 'Speed it up, Grandma.' I thought: 'That's great,'" she recalls. "If it was another old person on a bike they probably wouldn't have noticed them. I made them wake up for a minute."
Reader views (2)
I looooove Dame Viv and fantastic to see is still as refreshing and stylish as ever!
- Natty, London, 19/03/2009 10:09
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I've always thought she looked frightful, and still does.
- Dee, london, 18/03/2009 21:19
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