The 70′s gave birth to a style that has endured more than 3 decades and introduced 2 new generations to its clothing, music and attitude.

Punk was not just a whimsical stab at fashion creation; it was a revolution and encapsulated a complete era lifestyle, the music, the clothing, dance, language.

And it brought together one of the most consistently influential groups of individuals, in the right place at the right time.

Names we are all too familiar with like Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm Mclaren, Richard Branson, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten, the names behind the pistols. It was Richard Branson who signed the Pistols to a recording contract with the newly founded Virgin Record label and their first album Anarchy in The UK was a huge hit. This culmination of different talents gave birth to styles still embracing our senses.

Each individual went solo to become household names in their own right.

From record stores to airways and railways, the Virgin name has been branded all over the world. Richard Branson has become the inspiration for generations. He left school at the age of fifteen suffering from dyslexia. Gifted with a highly creative imagination his weaknesses never deterred his resolve as he went from strength outright. Richard Branson was born on July 18, 1950. His entrepreneurial ways began early when he was publishing a student magazine at just 16 years. Branson did not go on to graduate school but in 1970 the now famous Virgin brand had its beginnings in the form of a discount records mail order venture that he and his friend Nik Powell worked on.

Soon after opening a record store on Oxford Street, London, Branson began a recording label in 1972, Virgin Records. This was to be the first major success for the British entrepreneur as he started the label with a hit record. The instrumental artist Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” released in 1973 was a cash cow for Branson’s Virgin Records and it stayed in the UK music charts for 247 weeks. The record label went on to sign top music artists like “Genesis”, “The Pistols”, “The Rolling Stones” and “Simple Minds”.

In the mid 1970s as a young man not yet thirty, Malcolm McLaren owned and operated a London shop simply called “Sex” and dreamed of fame and fortune. He met a half formed group of teenage rock star hopefuls and fed them happy half truths about the great bands he had led to stardom. With his help in finding corner stone members John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) and Sid Vicious those boys became the English punk rock legends “The Pistols”. The group met its ends less then four years later and McLaren walked away with a little bit of personal fame, but with most of his big dreams unfulfilled. Using his status as a legend maker McLaren would later manage such 80s punk influenced pop successes as Adam Ant, “Bow Wow Wow”, and Boy George, and even release albums of music under his own name.

Vivienne Westwood accepted a DBE in the 2006 New Year’s Honours List “for services to fashion”, She has won the award for British Designer of the Year three times. In December 2003, she and the Wedgwood pottery company launched a series of tea sets featuring her designs, testimony to her versatility and maturity and the respect she has garnered, a far cry from Punk. Endurance in such a volatile industry for a prolonged time is a hallmark by any measure.

Together they forged a new creative direction for music, clothing and attitude, without a single academic qualification to share this is testimony to “born to succeed or fail”.

Meanwhile Vivienne Westwood carved out her own place in fashion history with her Pirates Collection and Buffalo Girl style.

Vivienne Isabel Swire was born in Glossopdale, Derbyshire, on 8 April 1941. Her mother had been a weaver in the local cotton mills and her father came from a family of shoemakers. Her parents ran a sub post office in Tintwistle before moving to north-west London in the 1950′s.

In 1965 she met Malcolm McLaren together they went on to become one of the most creative partnerships in history and as they say the rest is history.

In all design disciplines there have been few that are true leaders; worth names are, Frank Lloyd Wright, the father of modern architecture applied his genius to The Falling Water House, perfect in proportion and modern in any era. And yet it was built more than 70 years ago. His work in the late 18th century paved the way to The Art Deco style, which began to take shape around 1920. He was decades ahead of his time, it’s well documented. And, an engineer driven by steam and steel, Isambard Brunell the greatest structural engineer in living memory. The Clifton suspension Bridge is testimony of his ability to create a structure that performed a vital function poetically. Not even the Golden Gate and Sydney Harbour hold a candle to it, especially in the wind.

Their symbols live on in architectural structures, silk ties, bridges, business ventures, music and cufflinks, clothing and jewellery, all, instantly recognizably punk.

By: Patrick McMurray

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