READERS who find this book ill named, ill constructed and ill defined will probably delight its author. In his preface, Vermorel remarks of the work's first section: "If you think `We've got a right one here!', then I've done the job OK." Actually, you're likely to think him "a right one" from start to finish because his sense of self importance and deficiency of humour are remarkable.
Fashion & Perversity isn't by any means either a standard biography or a book about fashion. When, in the closing pages, Vermorel attends one of Westwood's shows in Paris, he comments: "I'm more interested in the event than the clothes." And as far as an assessment of the designer's abilities goes, that's pretty much it, although he does give a fairly incisive and devastating picture of her studio where the chaotic modus operandi appears to have changed little since Westwood first began to run up T shirts in the bedroom of her suburban home more than 20 years ago.
Think of this instead as a form of oblique memoir; no doubt conscious that few people would voluntarily pay to read the story of his own life, instead Vermorel has interwoven his story with that of Westwood and - more importantly, as far as he's concerned - her muse, Malcolm McLaren, with whom he attended art college. Within the book's three sections, the most substantial is called "Growing Up as a Genius in the Sixties". This doesn't, as any innocent might imagine, concern Westwood (she'd done her growing up the previous decade) but Vermorel himself who has managed to maintain a rather endearingly adolescent view of genius.
As a piece of writing about moody puberty, it's not badly done, but Westwood plays only a marginal role; a friend of her younger brother Gordon, the author first meets her when she is married with a small baby. In his eyes, she was one of the grown ups and so she seems to have remained - a steady matriarchal presence while he and McLaren have been getting on with the serious business of becoming geniuses. And yet he never notices that while the man behind the Sex Pistols is now a spent force and Vermorel is reduced to lecturing at art colleges and writing nonsensical books, Westwood's career has blossomed. If that's the outcome, who wants to be a genius?
But even if only indirectly, a picture of Westwood does somehow emerge from this silliness. The book's first section is what Vermorel calls an imaginary interview with the designer; rather than take time to talk to her afresh, he has instead preferred to draw on his memories and on press cuttings. An autodidact, like many others she is now a keen advocate of the formal education she once spurned. Her knowledge is undisciplined and erratic, weighed down with misconceptions and absurd faiths. She refuses to watch television (because of a belief that it only shows "rubbish") and thinks the present age hopelessly corrupt. To hear a woman once renowned for her iconoclasm spout such opinions is a sad confirmation that advancing years too often bring intellectual paralysis.
But her clothes have continued to improve precisely because she has recognised the importance of sound training and strong tailoring skills. The Westwood of today isn't dependent on a couple of sewing machines at home; she has a company which turns over more than £10 million annually and sells clothes across the world; the time spent poring over old costumes in the Victoria and Albert Museum has paid dividends. Thankfully, it's not obligatory either for a fashion designer to hold credible political opinions or for admirers of her work to espouse the same. However, it's still a pity that the opportunity to examine the life and work of one of Britain's foremost designers has been ill used. Westwood fervently believes in the well made garment but Vermorel, it would appear, doesn't feel the same way about books.
