…reasons to celebrate Vivienne Westwood’s 70th birthday…

• Even as a septuagenarian, even as a Dame, she remains an iconoclast, forever the mother of punk.

• She can be counted on to give good quote. She once said, “I don’t have space to enter examples or the history of this, so I’m left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.”

• Her first runway show was held exactly 30 years ago, in 1981. The theme? Pirates, kicking off a lifelong obsession. In 2000, she moved into a house that, in the 1700s, belonged to the naval explorer Captain Cook’s mother.

• When, in 1992 at Buckingham Palace, she was awarded the OBE from the Queen, she went commando, not realizing that when she twirled, the photographers would immortalize her private political statement. Or did she?

• She inspires her friends, no matter how plastic, to think green. As a present for her 70th birthday, Pamela Anderson sponsored 70 acres of Amazon rainforest through Cool Earth.