Mr. Kim was “outraged,” Ms. Kim stated. When it came to the protection and defence of his work, he took it very seriously.” It was a priceless possession for him. There was a long and public feud between Mr. McLaren and Miss Westwood after their partnership broke up in 1984, and the tension created a vacuum for forgers.
As a result of Mr. McLaren’s death in 2010, the prosecution decided not to pursue charges against Mr. Howard and Mr. Parker in the phoney apparel case. Mr. McLaren had been the key witness in that case.
This may have been a result of the Westwood family unknowingly fueling the bogus punk market. Joe Corré, the son of Mr. McLaren and Ms. Westwood, who started his lingerie firm in 1994, says he developed limited-edition runs of several of his early designs in order to earn money for the company.
Mr. Corré explained, “We replicated the chicken bone writing T-shirts and the studded ‘Venus’ T-shirts.” Limited-edition copies, created in 100-piece batches, and sold in Japan were marketed as such.” For a long time, copies of the work were limited to simple screen-printed T-shirts that could be made quickly and sold cheaply.
Mr. Corré said that Vivienne Westwood had given her permission for the replicas to be made. McLaren was visibly upset. To a group of people, including Vanity Fair journalist Steven Daly, McLaren wrote: “Who had given them this permission??” in an email dated October 14, 2008. I sent a letter to Joe telling him to cease and desist immediately. “I was in a rage.”
To “sympathizely exploit copyright of her work in order to raise money for various causes,” Mr. Corré recently became a director of the Vivienne Foundation. “Bring an end to the fakes” is what he claimed he would be looking into. Miss Kim continues to battle for McLaren’s legacy and believes he is being whitewashed out of his own history.
