Punk stylist Vivienne Westwood

British fashion designer Vivenne Westwood poses with models wearing her creations during London Fashion Week on Oct. 14, 1991, after having won the Designer of the Year award for the second straight year.

Punk was born to be incendiary, designed to provoke . . . a rebel yell in sound and fashion. And there would have been no punk look without the lady in the orange hair.

By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan

Destroy

Born Vivienne Isabel Swire in 1941, Westwood started out a primary school teacher, never wanting to be a fashion designer.

"I actually started [with] fashion to help my boyfriend," she told CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. "He just needed somebody to help him make these clothes. And I always could make things, yeah."

Her boyfriend was Malcolm McLaren, manager of the pioneering punk rock band, the Sex Pistols.

Let It Rock

Hers was a fashion rebellion made of ripped fabric, safety pins and S&M gear. In the early Seventies, Westwood and McLaren opened a music and fashion shop on London's Kings Road, called Let It Rock.

Sex

The store's name changes over the years included "Sex," "Seditionaries," and today, "Worlds End."

Jubilee

Debbie Juvenile, an assistant in Westwood and McLaren's shop Seditionaries, models Westwood's Jubilee outfit in 1977.

"At the time of punk rock, I was so outraged at the way the world is so corrupt and mismanaged and everything that the look was supposed to be an urban guerrilla," Westwood told Mason. "It was somehow a kind of crusade to challenge the status quo."

Forty years later, Westwood (left, with Anthony Mason) still owns her own company. Her fashion empire is headquartered in the Battersea neighborhood of London.

1999 Fall/Winter collection

A model displays an outfit during a showing of the Vivienne Westwood 1999 Fall/Winter collection at Bryant Park in New York February 16, 1999.

Westwood told Mason that, a lot of the time, fashion is "a reaction against what is."

Oscar Fashion Show

Model J.T., wearing a cobalt satin gown with jeweled bodice by Vivienne Westwood, poses next to an Academy Award statue during the Oscar Fashion Show March 3, 1999, in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The Iron Lady

For a 1989 April Fools cover of the British magazine Tatler, Vivienne Westwood dressed up as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

"Oh, that was brilliant. That was really, really great. I was so proud of my acting ability!" she exclaimed.

Spring 2001 collection

British designer Vivienne Westwood is congratulated by models wearing outfits from her Spring 2001 collection, during a fashion show November 14, 2000 in West Hollywood, Calif.

Vivienne Westwood 1985-1995

A Christies press officer arranges one of the designer dresses that are part of the Vivienne Westwood street style collection being auctioned in London, September 4, 2001. The collection spanned an entire decade.

Dame Vivienne Westwood

British fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood poses for photographers after collecting her insignia from the Prince of Wales during an Investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London, June 9, 2006. The designer known for her subversive and eccentric take on traditional British style caused a stir on her previous visit to the Palace in 1992, when she collected her OBE from the Queen while wearing no knickers.

Los Angeles

Actress Anna Kendrick and Dame Vivienne Westwood arrive at the Vivienne Westwood store opening party on Melrose, March 30, 2011 in Los Angeles, California.

Bangkok

Fashion admirers look at outfits by Vivienne Westwood at an exhibition in Bangkok, August 18, 2006. The outrageous outfits, including vintage fetish wear and glittering corsets, are part of a retrospective of Westwood's creations at the Thailand Creative and Design Center.