Vivienne Westwood: Where Punk Spirit Meets Cutting-Edge Technology

Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood was an English fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and New Wave fashions into the mainstream. Westwood came to public notice when she made clothes for the boutique that she and Malcolm McLaren ran on King's Road in West London, which became known as “Sex”. Their ability to synchronize clothing and music shaped the 1970s UK punk scene, which included McLaren's band, the Sex Pistols. With a design record spanning over forty years, Vivienne Westwood is now recognized as a global brand, with stores in over 60 locations around the world.

One of the brand's mottos is “Buy less, choose well, make it last”. Given the fashion sector is one of the largest contributors to global pollution, water usage, and waste generation, their reputation for not following trends is helping to create a more responsible fashion industry. Giorgio adds to this point: “there is no contradiction in this from our point of view, because we consider that we need to create valuable products that can represent something that is against the consumerism and against the anxiety of consumption. In this way, we think that any kind of products must be qualitative…something that is not going to be a waste, but it must be something that is passed through generation.”

Like a lot of companies, Vivienne Westwood has gone through a digital transformation, embracing new technology in order to efficiently transform their existing processes. “Technology is fundamental now for making all the process efficient and real. FlexPLM is a central hub for all our information, and it streamline communication, making us available to, to manage all the product lifecycle. I would say that in the last couple of years, we have been focused extensively on mapping and digitizing all our internal processes in order to make clarity. We have a speed up production timelines and we have provided greater visibility to every stage of the product development in all the departments. It seems something simple, but it's not at all. Lately, this kind of approach that is centralizing this kind of information can make us able to maintain a competitive edge. It will enable faster go-to-market strategies as well as reducing cost.”

Giorgio touches on the company’s multicultural work environment, bringing in various viewpoints resulting in a special workplace culture. “I have learned a lot from our president, Carlo D’Amario. I think that his vision of creating a solid structure to permit a designer to express their self is a secret of the success of this project. We have people coming from every country of the world, we have this ownership that is a mix between German, English and Italian culture. This creates this kind of contradiction that internally means the capability of growing up and learning every day something new. Discussion and dialectical activities are the base of the daily activity of the company. This kind of solid structure makes also comfortable all the company to work in a sense of belonging that makes everything that we do something special.”

FlexPLM operates at an enterprise scale, managing and transforming the product development lifecycle for more brand and retail users than any other fashion or retail PLM provider. Our expert Kyle Marden touches on how FlexPLM is supporting their transformation and contributing to this success: “One of the biggest challenges in fashion retail is managing complex product development data across diverse categories and dispersed teams, which Vivienne Westwood has. Centralizing critical data in FlexPLM for Vivienne Westwood's designers has been critical to their success. By improving collaboration, reducing errors, and streamlining workflow, FlexPLM empowers Vivian Westwood to bring on trend products to market with greater speed, efficiency, and profitability. PTC and FlexPLM provide complete visibility across the value chain and helps them respond to their customers demand for responsibility.”