Vivienne Westwood 'Hates England' And Urges Scots To Vote Yes
Veteran fashion designer made controversial comments at her London Fashion Week Show, sending models onto the catwalk with 'yes' badges
Never one to shrink away from airing her opinions on everything from Julian Assange to ballet, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood has come down hard on the side of the 'yes' campaign in the referendum on Scottish independence.
Using her London Fashion Week show to offer her support, attendees found a short statement in favour of an independent Scotland on their seats and models walking in the show were all pinned with 'yes' badges.
The statement read: "I am so excited. Fingers crossed they will win. Because if they do, it could be the turning point towards a better world.
"They could lead by example."
She strengthened her stance even more later while speaking to reporters after the show, commenting:
"I hate England.
"I like Scotland because somehow I think they are better than we are. They are more democratic."
Westwood also said that those supporting the Better Together campaign were just 'frightened and stupid'.
The English fashionista went on to say: “I’m very very unpatriotic about England because it’s being completely ruined.
“All world politicians are just dragging people down into a system that’s actually over - the capitalist system.
“We just hope that Scotland can be a model for future hope and development where we have a people’s democracy instead of everything only for profit and for business."
Westwood is a big supporter of Scotland in her work, even creating her own clan and tartan for her Anglomania collection in 1993.
She named her clan MacAndreas after her third husband and collaborator Andreas Kronthaler.
New tartan usually takes a couple of hundred years to be accepted by the Lochcarron of Scotland, but MacAndreas' tartan was recognised within months and she is now the only contemporary designer to have her work displayed at the Lochcarron Museum of Tartan.
Westwood was welcomed into the Scottish Fashion Awards Hall of Fame earlier this month.
When picking up her award she said: "[An independent Scotland could be] a model to us all. . . if it could become a people-friendly society.
"Surely you can still have the queen and be the United Kingdom, if we win, you can be our friends if you wanted, it’s up to you.
"I think it’s absolutely great that almost half, it would be great if even a half, were getting the other half, a half of Scottish people want democracy."
In the past Westwood has added her voice to the anti-fracking campaign, Peta, Julian Assange and Occupy London.