Vivienne Westwood - Wonderful Woman No. 34

Vivienne Westwood - Born 1941
British Fashion Designer and Business Woman

Added to the album by a wonderful woman called Tara

To be truthful, modern fashion is not my area of expertise. I have not bought women's magazines for some years, I do not follow fashion blogs and during my lifetime, I have owned little more than a handful of designer clothes. I buy my clothes in charity shops and Primark, I wear things over and over, I recycle old outfits and have an unbelievable collection of accessories to wear with my plain old clothes. There are probably hundreds of designers you could name of whom I would never have heard but Vivienne Westwood, it would be almost impossible not to be aware of her... in fact, throughout my life, she has been a household name.

Vivenne was born in Derbyshire with humble beginnings. At the age of seventeen, with her family she moved to London. For one term only, she studied fashion and silver-smithing at the University of Westminster's Harrow School of Art, she left believing a working class girl could not make a career from art. She worked in a factory for a while and then studied to be a primary school teacher. Whilst working as a teacher, she made her own jewellery, which she sold at the weekends on a stall in London's Portobella Road.

In 1971, Vivienne was in the midst of breaking up with her first husband. In a squat she met an art student by the name of Malcolm McLaren, that was the start of a relationship that would change her life and the world of fashion forever. Vivienne left her job as a teacher, as the pair opened a boutique in London. For the boutique, she created clothes inspired by bikers, prostitutes and the seedy underbelly of London society. During this time, Malcolm became manager of the punk group The Sex Pistols. The group wore Vivienne's designs and in doing so the iconic image of punk in the 1970s was created, using bondage and fetish styles, spikes and safety-pins, combined with Scottish tartan and even designs inspired by 16th and 17th century historical portraits, Vivienne becoming a central part of the cultural movement taking place in the United Kingdom.

The idea of mad, mad, mad torturous clothing was kind of fun... and I support them [Vivienne and Malcolm Mclaren] for that, for going that way.
John Lydon

Vivienne's first catwalk show came in 1981, with the theme Pirates. All subsequent collections have had their own theme. Vivienne spearheaded the concept of fashion as art, her catwalk shows as much a theatrical experience as a platform for her wares. Reflective of her contribution of art through fashion, The Victoria and Albert museum exhibited a retrospective of her work in 2004/2005, since then a number of other world galleries have displayed her work.

Vivienne Westwood has become a celebrated brand, stores around the United Kingdom and also in Milan, Paris and L.A. Her designs are worn by the great and the good. She has been British designer of the year on three occasions and continues to be recognised as one of the most talented creatives of our time.

Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination, insight, things that have nothing to do with reason.
Vivienne Westwood

Aung San Suu Kyi - Wonderful Woman No. 33

Aung San Suu Kyi - Born 1945
Burmese Political Activist

Added to the album by a wonderful woman called Tara

She should be president of the universe...let alone just her own country.
Owain, A Wonderful Man

Sometimes I feel the magnitude of just how wonderful many of the women in this album are, may be too great for me to be able to adequately write about in this blog. Aung San Suu Kyi is one of those women, a woman who symbolises peace, democracy and all that should be in the world.

Suu Kyi's parents were both prominent political figures in her native Burma, her father founded the Modern Burmese Army and it was he who negotiated independence from Britain in 1947. In the same year, he was assassinated. Suu Kyi's mother later became the Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal. Suu Kyi travelled well in her early life and became a graduate of Oxford University, having studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She later earned a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to her native Burma with her husband Dr Michael Aris, initially to visit and tend to her critically ill mother. Her return to the country coincided with major political strain in the country, students, workers and Buddhist monks protesting for democratic reform from the military leaders. Suu Kyi felt compelled to join the campaign and before long was leading the revolt, travelling far and wide organising rallies and calling for peaceful demonstrations to demand democratic elections and political reform. Such demonstrations were militantly combated by the country's army leaders, who had by then seized power from the dictator General Ne Win.

In 1990, a general election was called by the military junta. Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy won the election with 59% of votes, this would have given the party 80% of parliamentary seats and would have seen Suu Kyi become Prime Minister of Burma. Would have... the leaders of the military did not allow this, they nulified the election, refused to hand over power and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest. She remained in confinement for much of the next twenty years, her husband left the country and she was never able to see him again. Despite international pressure, Burma remains to this day under strict martial law, elections were held in 2010 but Suu Kyi refused to take part as she believed they would be unfair, a fear supported by the international community, described by Barrack Obama as "neither free nor fair."

Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and has received a number of other awards and honours for her promotion of democracy, people power and free thought. She is heralded by political figures the world over and is an inspiration to so many. She will forever be celebrated as a symbol of peace.

No matter the regime's physical power, in the end they can't stop the people; they can't stop freedom... We shall have our time.
Aung San Suu Kyi

Thank you, once again, to Tara for her wonderful addition. To finish, a video of Herbie Hancock with a beautiful piece inspired by and named after Aung San Suu Kyi.

Juliette Lewis - Wonderful Woman No. 32

Juliette Lewis - Born 1973
American Actress and Singer

Added to the album by a wonderful woman called Tara

I love her as an actress... the roles she has done have been ballsy.
Tara

Tara makes a great point, Juliette Lewis has tackled some intense roles as an actress. From the feisty teenager setting Robert De Niro alight in Cape Fear to her psychopathic murderous in Natural Born Killers, Juliette often portrays a strong female character, unafraid of throwing herself into the dramatisation, allowing the characters to be three dimensional, full of emotion, sometimes dark, sometimes good, sometimes ugly and sometimes beautiful.

Let me tell you, Juliette Lewis is awesome... I really admire Juliette, because she puts it down.
Jada Pinkett Smith

As well as film, Juliette has been seen in many television roles in show such as The Wonder Years and Dharma & Greg. Her acting career has allowed her to work with some of the greatest ever directors, including Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone, she has held her own starring alongside some of Hollywood's most famous leading men such as the above mentioned De Niro and Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt and Gary Oldman, she has been nominated for an Academy Award and won a number of other accolades and has received critical acclaim for many of her roles.

Sometimes, life immitates art, Juliette played a rock chick in the film Strange Days and in 2009, Juliette embarked on a new career in the music industry. She fronted American rock band Juliette and the Licks and The New Romantiques, before launching herself as a solo artist. She has also appeared on a number of tracks by The Prodigy.

I don't want to be famous as a movie star and have the whole world love me, I want to be a creative actress.
Juliette Lewis

We love a powerful woman and Juliette has created a few of those, making her too another wonderful woman.

Björk - Wonderful Woman No. 31

Björk - Born 1965
Icelandic Singer, Songwriter & Actress

Added to the album by a wonderful woman called Tara

Creative, unique and successful - These are the things I admire about Bjork most but add to that being a fabulous lyricist and singer, she sure seems pretty wonderful to me.

(Bjork is) more intelligent than most opera singers.
John Tavener, Composer

I remember hearing her for the first time in the 1990s. Her singing style divided opinion, my parents hated her, some of my friends did not understand her, I thought she was amazing. Her lyrics are intensely emotive, I love the quality of her voice and the different sounds she is able to create and I have loved many of her songs, most notable Big Time Sensuality, Violently Happy and Possibly Maybe. She is produced by other people I admire, she has collaborated with people I think are great. As an artist she has just got it right as far as I am concerned.

Often those that are individualistic and creative seem not to receive the credit they deserve but that seems to be different where Bjork is concerned. Of course, many have lined up to be critical but the list of people who credit her as an inspiration is enormous. More over, she has released eight hugely successful albums between 1992 and 2011, has won a plethora of awards including Brit Awards and Icelandic Music Awards in her home nation, she has further been nominated for masses of awards including twelve Grammy nominations and a nomination for an Oscar in the category Best Original Song in a Motion Picture.

As well as a wonderful career in music, Bjork has flirted with a career in film. She has starred in four motion pictures and has also made cameos in a number of others, many of her films also featuring her music.

It was Björk's role in Dancer in the Dark that made me want to be an actor.
Gemma Arterton

What many people admire most about Bjork is her individual style, the way she creates an image, making herself a piece of living art. And also that she is damned feisty, remember when she knocked that photographer to the ground? Maybe we are not supposed to like it when people do that sort of thing but it did make me feel quite impressed by her.

Thank you Tara for another excellent suggestion.

You only live twice, one life for yourself and one for your dreams.
Bjork

Often imitated but never equalled, Bjork a definite wonderful woman.

Audrey Hepburn - Wonderful Woman No. 30

Audrey Hepburn - 1929-1993
British Actress

Added to the album by a wonderful woman called Tara

Audrey Hepburn is a legend.
Alison, A Wonderful Woman

I quite agree with Alison's sentiments about Audrey... another fantastic suggestion from Tara.

Like Marilyn Monroe (Wonderful Woman No. 5 - http://iamawonderfulwoman.blogspot.com/2012/01/marilyn-monroe-wonderful-woman-no-5.html ), Audrey has that indescribable something, that just makes her a little more special than the rest. A sparkle, that is instantly captured in the imagination, that thing that can't be bottled or manufactured, it just... is.

The first time I remember seeing the sparkle of Audrey Hepburn was watching her as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. I was captivated by her transformation from coarse eastender to well-spoken lady. I actually remember practising "Hurricanes hardly happen, in Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire," wanting to speak in the perfect English lilt.

Audrey later sparkled into my life again when I saw her as Holly Golightly in the iconic 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's. I was mesmerised by her sashaying through the film in the most exquisite wardrobe, carefree, bohemian and a complete individual. I have read that this was her most challenging role, funny that the most challenging was also her most recognisable.

She appeared in many other films, was an oscar winner, a grammy winner and recieved countless other accolades in her career. She was and remains, one of the biggest style icons the world has ever known and has been an inspiration to many designers, fashion editors and women of style.

You look at Audrey Hepburn. She had that kind of elegance and yet was accessible.
Tom Cruise

As well as a wonderful film career and a legacy of timeless style, Audrey should also be considered a wonderful woman for her humanitarian work with UNICEF. Audrey had been born in Brussels (her father was English, her mother Dutch) and had spent some of her early life in Britain before moving to The Netherlands in 1939 because her parents believed that the country would remain neutral during the second World War. When the country was occupied by the Nazis, the Hepburn family found themselves trapped. After the D-Day Landings in 1944, living conditions within The Netherlands became ever more difficult, the Nazis blocked supply routes, leaving the people without food or fuel often starving or freezing to death.

Audrey survived this but the impact of living through such hardship had a profound effect on her. She is said to have often spoken of the thought of children suffering and dying, the thoughts consumed her. She became a Ambassador of UNICEF and went on numerous missions with the cause, including work in Ethiopia, Turkey, South America and Somalia.

I went into rebel country and saw mothers and their children who had walked for ten days, even three weeks, looking for food, settling onto the desert floor into makeshift camps where they may die. Horrible. That image is too much for me. The 'Third World' is a term I don't like very much, because we're all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering.
Audrey Hepburn

There are a great many things that made Audrey sparkle, a great many things that made her different and wonderful.

Anne Frank - Wonderful Woman No. 29

Anne Frank - 1929-1945
German-Dutch Diarist

Added to the album by a wonderful woman called Tara

It is worth noting, that we will never really know how wonderful a woman Anne would have grown to be... she was just a girl really but a truly wonderful one at that.

It is important that we read the diary of this woman in school, that children are taught to understand the suffering one human can cause another. Reading her diary, when I was just a girl myself, had a profound effect on me and continues to influence people the world over, more than six decades after it was written.

Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her family moved to Amsterdam when Anne was four years old due to the Nazis gaining power of Germany. In 1941, she lost her German citizenship because of her Jewish faith and the anti-Semitic Nazi rule. Sadly, this move did not secure the Frank family's future, as the Nazis later gained occupation of The Netherlands.

Stories of the persecution of Jews by the regime filtered into Amsterdam. In July 1942, in fear of their lives, the entire Frank family went into hiding in the attic building of Anne's father's office building. They were later joined in their secret hiding place by another Jewish family, the Van Pels and later again by a Jewish dentist. This left seven people spending every moment of every day in the cramped rooms for a little over two years.

Anne kept a constant log of the daily occurrences within the secret refuge. She wrote about the Nazi occupation and the war of course but also about her feelings, her thoughts her dreams and aspirations. She wrote about her relationship with her mother and the others in her family. She wrote about her desire to return to school and to have a career in journalism once the war was over. And touchingly, she wrote about the feelings she experienced towards Peter van Pels, the son of the family whom they shared their space. About their first kiss and about her fears that the romance was not genuine but rather due to the situation they found themselves flung together by.

All those jokes about marrying Peter if we stayed here long enough weren’t so silly after all. Not that I’m thinking of marrying him, mind you. I don’t even know what he’ll be like when he grows up. Or if we’ll even love each other enough to get married.
Anne Frank

In August 1944, the Nazis where tipped off about the attic hiding place. The building was stormed and the occupants arrested. Anne's diary was left behind, collected with some family photographs by local people.

The following month, Anne was deported to Auschwitz. The women were separated from the men, forced to strip naked to be disinfected, their heads were shaved and tattooed with identification numbers. Still only fifteen years old, Anne found herself a slave to hard labour and spent her nights in cramped and squalid huts. For the seven months Anne spent in Auschwitz, she believed her father had been sent to the gas chamber, with the many others she knew to have died in this horrific way. In late October 1944, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen, her mother left behind to die of starvation. It was here, in Bergen-Belsen, that Anne and Margot died during an epidemic of typhus, which killed in the region of 17,000 prisoners.

Anne's father had not been gassed in Auschwitz, as Anne had believed. He survived and after the war, returned to Amsterdam where he was given the salvage from their attic hide-out, including Anne's diary. So moved by her diary and by her repeated statements of desire to become a writer, he passed the diary to those who he believed would publish her memoirs. The diary was first published in 1950 with the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. It was and is internationally successful and Anne's writing critically acclaimed.

Through her candid accounts of her life, Anne has become the most famous and discussed victim of the Holocaust and reminds us that whatever our differences, we are all just people with thoughts and feelings and ambition and hope.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank

Thank you Tara for making this most wonderful addition.

Tori Amos - Wonderful Woman No. 28

Tori Amos - Born 1963
American Singer, Songwriter and Musician

Added to the album by a wonderful woman called Tara

An awesome lyricist and musician and an open and honest rape survivor.
Tara

I have to admit, though I know some of Tori's music and I remember her provocative performance of Cornflake Girl on Top of the Pops (and how it was the hot topic at school the next day), I knew little else about her until Tara added her to the album. I did not know that she was a rape survivor. Since reading about her in order to write this blog, I have learned that she is not only extremely gifted and talented but also that she is a strong, emotionally aware, creative and just woman, who is a deserved entry in this album. So a huge credit to Tara for suggesting her.

I have learned that Tori had started to learn and master playing the piano at the age of two and that by the age of five had earned a scholarship to attend a celebrated music school. While still in high school, Tori began to play gigs in bars and clubs. Her first single was released when she was still only seventeen. And at the age of twenty-one, Tori moved to Los Angeles to further her career.

It was in L.A. that Tori became the victim of a horrific and violent sexual attack. She had performed at a gig and had chatted to a guy in the audience afterwards and had been persuaded to drive him home. She was then subjected to being held at knife point, being brutally raped and repeatedly told that she would be murdered that night.

The idea was to take me to his friends and cut me up, and he kept telling me that, for hours. And if he hadn't needed more drugs I would have been just one more news report, where you see the parents grieving for their daughter. And I was singing hymns, as I say in the song, because he told me to. I sang to stay alive. Yet I survived that torture, which left me urinating all over myself and left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violation through sex.
Tori Amos

Not only did Tori survive, she survived to tell her story through music and in doing so, has helped other survivors of sexual abuse and assault to feel understood and many have said her music has assisted them in coming to terms with what they have endured. Tori co-founded RAINN, The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network which operates as a hotline for those in crisis, as well as having programmes to prevent sexual assault, help victims and to ensure that rapists are brought to justice. Tori was the spokeswoman for the campaign (a position now taken by Christina Ricci) and speaks openly about her own experiences. She has donated proceeds from album sales and concert tours to the cause, as well as dedicating her time and experience as often as possible.

Tori's career as a musician has been hugely successful, particularly in the 1990s where she had hits internationally with songs that remain popular, such as Crucify, Cornflake Girl and Professional Widow. She has produced twelve albums between 1992 and 2011 and has been nominated for a plethora of awards. As a touring artist, Tori is legendary, indeed Rolling Stone Magazine voted her the fifth best touring artist in 2003.

Tori Amos has survived so much, achieved so much and created so much, an amazing, strong and wonderful, wonderful woman.