Vivienne Westwood‘s life is full of fashion - and politics. The British fashion designer and “Queen of Punk” is not only well-known for her fashion designs but also for her social engagement and so Westwood speaks out against hydraulic fracturing among others. Last weekend the red-headed designer and eccentric Dame joined anti-fracking protesters at their camp in Balcombe in Sussex. Surrounded by activists, she marched past energy firm Cuadrilla’s exploratory oil drilling site in West Sussex and made demands on a public debate on fracking as she told the Press Association: “I’m anti-fracking and I’m here to protest. There has been no debate. They are trying to rush this thing through, for what?”

Dazed Digital published a detailed article and it’s worth reading! Also, check out Vivienne Westwood’s manifesto blog “Get A Life“!

Photo: Stuart Griffiths via Dazed Digital.

His futuristic, Latex-clad Mutants are irritating and fascinating at the same time: searching for the beauty in ugly, the Dutch designer Bart Hess has spent years making his mutants which now have been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery. On the occasion its 20th anniversary Hugo Boss chose him to design an exclusive one-off piece among 19 other renown international artists. Dazed & Confused met Bart Hess for an interview and the result is worth reading:

Dazed &  Confused: Let’s talk about “Mutants”. When you subvert the human figure are you trying to shock, disturb, repulse us—or are you defining a new vision of beauty?

Bart Hess: I think the latter, because as an artist, its the most interesting boundary to work within. I love how tribes—especially from non-Western cultures—define beauty. For us its shocking, but for them its really beautiful. I want to challenge my audience to decide for themselves.

DD: What inspired you to do “Mutants” in the first place?

BH: I was fascinated by the idea of physically morphing the body in reality, liquifying and sculpting it with the use of Latex . Its almost like 3D modeling, but in real life. I was also inspired by “Space Odyssey 2001″, “Terminator 2″, and Italian Futurism.

Don’t miss to check out the entire interview here!

Photo Bart Hess. via Dazed Digital.

In a new Dazed & Confused short film the English art director and graphic designer Peter Saville, who is also known for his record sleeves for Factory Records (most notably for Joy Division and New Order) which he designed during the 80s, and Belgian fashion designer and Creative Director of Dior Raf Simons speak about their multidisciplinary works. Shot during Raf Simons’ Spring/Summer 2014 show at Gagosian Gallery in Paris, both look back on their lives which have been ranging between the disciplines ever since, right in the in-between space dividing design and high art, pop and modernism, fashion and music.

In 2003 Peter Saville and Raf Simons began working together when the fashion designer used images from Peter Saville’s archive in his Autumn/Winter 2003 Collection. Not long after Raf Simons presented his newest creations for Spring/Summer 2014, Dazed published this short film, called “An Ideal for Living,” in which ”these two giants of late 20th, early 21st century design talk about the term ‘interzone’ – the word popularised by Peter’s friends Joy Division (and William Burroughs) about the liminal place they merrily plumb.”