Vivienne Westwood, influential punk fashion maverick, dies at 81

LONDON — Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, died Thursday at 81.

Westwood's eponymous fashion house announced her death on social media platforms, saying she died peacefully. A cause was not disclosed.

"Vivienne continued to do the things she loved, up until the last moment, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better," the statement said.

Westwood's fashion career began in the 1970s when her radical approach to urban street style took the world by storm. But she went on to enjoy a long career highlighted by a string of triumphant.

The name Westwood became synonymous with style and attitude even as she shifted focus from year to year, her range vast and her work never predictable.

As her stature grew, she seemed to transcend fashion. The young woman who had scorned the British establishment eventually became one of its leading lights, even as she kept her hair dyed .

Andrew Bolton, curator of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, said Westwood and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren — her onetime partners — "gave the punk movement a look

"The ripped shirts, the safety pins, the provocative slogans," Bolton said. "She introduced postmodernism. It was so influential from the mid-70s. The punk movement has never dissipated.

Westwood's long career was full of contradictions: She was a lifelong rebel honored several times by Queen Elizabeth II. She dressed like a teenager even in her 60s and became an outspoken.