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The granddaughter of Dame Vivienne Westwood has resigned from the eponymous fashion house in a dispute over the legacy of the late British designer and use of her designs.
Cora Corré, who worked for the Vivienne Westwood Company, has called for its chief executive Carlo D’Amario to be removed in a letter to staff that announced her resignation.
Westwood, working with Malcolm McLaren, pioneered the taboo-busting punk aesthetic in their Kings Road clothes shop in west London in the 1970s.
The Vivienne Westwood Company was set up in 1993 to sell the designer’s clothing and merchandise.
Corré is co-founder of the Vivienne Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation set up with her grandmother in 2019 to support causes advocated by the designer, such as tackling climate change and defending human rights.
Corré has acted as a bridge between the Vivienne Westwood Company and the Vivienne Foundation as tensions arose between the two.
Relations have been strained since Westwood’s death in 2022, with disputes arising over the company’s rights to use her designs.
The foundation says Westwood transferred all her pre-1993 creative design and property rights to it, including some of her best-known punk and post-punk work.
The foundation in October objected to the use of Westwood’s design archive by the company in a collaboration with skate label Palace.
At the time, it argued the use of designs from the archive “showed a blatant disregard for Vivienne’s wishes, her legacy and the foundation”.
The foundation has said that the Vivienne Westwood Company has also successfully moved to trademark “The Vivienne Foundation”.
In her letter to company staff, Corré alleged that her grandmother had been unhappy with the way the business was being run.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.