God Save The Westwood Girl: Punk and Its Price Tag
- Yukthamugi
- Dec 21, 2025
- 4 min read
As punk evolves with modernity, does it risk losing its original bite? Our Beauty and Style writer, Yuktha, traces the story of the Westwood Girl. The history, the rebellion, and what it means to embody one in 2025.
Apples and oranges. Chalk and cheese. Oil and water. Punk and pretty. The common ground? They just simply don’t mix. Punk wasn't created for TikTok moodboards, glossy publications, or the runway. Yet here we are in 2025; one of the most sought-after aesthetics in fashion is now carefully crafted. It was once the very anti-fashion movement that spat in the face of the fashion industry. At the centre of this exquisite contradiction stands the figure I refer to as the Westwood Girl: part tartan, part pearls, all attitude. She’s a lot of intentional chaos made chic. She’s anarchy with impeccable styling.
But when rebellion becomes aspirational, does it lose its bite?
Vivienne Westwood never designed clothes to fit into polite society. Her early work included bondage trousers, ripped tees, latex, and fetish silhouettes, and it wasn’t about being different for the sake of aesthetics. It was a confrontation. Clearly, it’s politics, kink, class anger, and a spit towards the establishment. When Sex Pistols performed in her pieces, the impact wasn’t fashion but cultural combustion. Fans copied the look with DIY ferocity, tearing, pinning, staining, and provoking. Punk dressed like it had something to say, because it did.
Yet, the moment punk gained a recognisable visual identity, it became vulnerable. Haute couture houses can copy, package and eventually sell the look.
That’s the fault line where today’s Westwood Girl stands.
The industry’s late-80s and 90s fascination with punk didn’t happen by accident. High fashion thrives on reinvention, and punk offered the one thing luxury couldn’t manufacture: authenticity. Chaos as glamour. Defiance as allure. The ripped tee and safety pin, once born from necessity or rage, turned into the ultimate badge of curated cool.
Westwood herself became the bridge between rebellion and refinement. On the runway, her provocations needed a new polish: ripped tartan draped into tailored elegance, bondage straps reconstructed as design lines, and fetish silhouettes reimagined into historical corsetry with a punk heart. She didn’t abandon punk; rather, she elevated it, though the elevation inevitably softened its sharpest edges.
By the 2000s, punk-inspired fashion had fully entered the luxury bloodstream. Designers like Alexander McQueen, Hedi Slimane, and John Galliano built entire collections around punk’s visual codes, like leather bikers, hardware, and slashed fabrics, transforming what was once spontaneous and homemade into curated, editor-approved rebellion.
The irony? As the fashion industry refined punk, it drifted further from its anti-establishment core.
I started to wonder: is the modern Westwood Girl a true heir of punk, or simply a chic participant in its glossy commodification?
Punk in today’s world gives more performance than protest. Rebellion is available to purchase in a boutique; wearing subversion to the Met Gala and posting dissent on Instagram are all carefully filtered for maximum impact. Anti-fashion marketing is led by designers and celebrities who understand that edge, especially when presented properly – it sells, and you know what? I respect it.
Contemporary designers such as Dilara Findikoglu breathe new life into punk. Dangerously flirting with fetish, deconstruction, and theatrics. Meanwhile, celebrities like Olivia Rodrigo and Jenna Ortega introduce punk to the masses through glossy, camera-ready chaos. TikTok, in turn, pushes tartan skirts, fishnets, vintage band tees, and heavy eyeliner onto millions of screens, making punk accessible enough to be delivered by algorithm.
And the result? Punk is no longer underground. Punk is now live. Mainstream. Global. Ubiquitous.
Despite being commercialised, punk still resonates, especially with Gen Z.
This generation is navigating life through curated feeds, capitalist burnout, and the pressure to perform authenticity. Punk — even its 2025-softened version — offers a language for individuality: distressed fabrics and mismatched prints scream personality in a world that flattens identity into trends. A safety pin on a collar or a leather harness isn’t just a fashion choice but a subtle refusal to conform.
Anti-conformity, autonomy, and dissent, the OG punk values, all align with Gen Z’s consciousness around climate anxiety, gender fluidity, and political engagement. Yet unlike the 1970s, today’s rebellion is safer. More performative. More flexible. Punk’s been rebranded as a tool for exploring identity rather than for outright rejection of society. Less about burning the system down, more about carving out space within it.
And that’s the essence of the modern Westwood Girl.
She is rebellious but curated. Provocative but photogenic. Political but consumable. She knows the symbolism she’s wearing, even if she bought it from Vivienne Westwood’s boutique or a secondhand app. She’s not pretending to be Sid Vicious – she’s expressing herself through a language he and his bandmates helped invent.
So can rebellion be bought? Maybe. Maybe not. But in a world where even counterculture comes with a price tag, punk has evolved from a singular movement into a fluid identity, a spectrum of defiance, performance, and personal power.
The Westwood Girl doesn’t claim to be punk in the 1970s sense. She’s punk in the 2025 sense: self-aware, stylish, intentional, and navigating contradictions rather than pretending they don’t exist.
Because today, being punk isn’t about tearing down the system. It’s about choosing how you show up inside it.
And perhaps, that choice alone is rebellion enough.
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