To the world, she was the godmother of punk, a rule-defying haute couturier who repeatedly stuck two fingers up to the establishment as she made her mark on global fashion.
By the time of her death in 2022, she had amassed a £20.5million fortune, dressed everyone from Carrie Bradshaw to the Sex Pistols and modelled for 18 portraits now hanging in the National Gallery.
She won every award and accolade going, notoriously making headlines in 1992 for turning up to collect her OBE at Buckingham Palace without any underwear on.
To Cora Corre, however, Dame Vivienne Westwood was simply ‘Grandma’.
And the 81-year-old with flame-coloured hair and a permanent twinkle in her sea-green eyes had been a key part of Cora’s life since she was a baby.
As her grandmother’s muse, Cora walked her first catwalk, the 2001 Vivienne Westwood show in Paris, when she was just four years old. She went on her first protest, the 2003 march against the war in Iraq, aged six.
She even inspired a fashion campaign – Vivienne’s 2009 collection was based on Cora’s time at the £36,000-a-year Bedales School in Hampshire – in her GCSE year and found herself being dubbed ‘the next Cara Delevingne’.
Fast-forward a few years and Cora, now 27, is forging her way as a successful model and activist, continuing to support her late grandmother’s work and wearing her label with pride – just as Vivienne would have wanted.
Or at least, that is how it seemed.
But last week Cora – the daughter of Vivienne’s younger son, Joe Corre, and entrepreneur Serena Rees, co-founders of the lingerie brand Agent Provocateur – opened up about an extraordinary dispute going on at Vivienne Westwood Ltd, in an astonishingly stark letter emailed to all staff.
In the three-page letter, seen in full by the Mail, Cora alleges her grandmother was ‘bullied’ in later life by the company’s current chief executive officer, Italian businessman Carlo D’Amario, 79, who joined in 1986.
She says Vivienne’s legacy has been ‘betrayed and disrespected’ by Carlo, accusing him of bringing ‘enormous shame and reputational damage’ to the brand.
‘As many of you know, in the years leading up to my grandmother’s death, she was deeply unhappy with the way the VW [Vivienne Westwood] company was being run,’ Cora continues.
‘It was her wish that the current CEO, Carlo D’Amario, was removed and that the company was properly managed in a way that respected her values.’
She adds: ‘Seemingly, not content with the damage Carlo inflicted on Vivienne personally, he is now inflicting damage on her legacy through the company.’
She goes on to ask the company’s directors to remove the CEO from his position with immediate effect, and concludes by resigning from her own role as campaigns manager.
The letter sent shockwaves through the fashion community and fans of the 50-year-old brand, many of whom had assumed those at the helm after Vivienne’s death were working with her family and had their full support.
But fashion is, as it’s often said, a cut-throat world and – if the leaked letter is anything to go by – it seems family ties count for little, even at the very top.
A source close to the family says Cora is now taking time away from the spotlight and – apart from posting a brief update for her 42,000 Instagram followers, in which she says her position at the company had become ‘untenable’ – has no more to say on the matter.
‘This was a difficult decision for her but she is confident in it,’ the source says. ‘She knows it’s what her grandmother would have wanted. It’s been a long time coming.’
Meanwhile, Vivienne Westwood Ltd and Carlo D’Amario did not respond to repeated requests for comment and have not responded to the letter’s accusations.
Before now, from the outside at least, there had been few signs of turbulence at the company.
So how has one of Britain’s biggest business success stories, which recorded an operating profit of £38.5million in its most recent annual accounts, come to be at loggerheads with the Corre and Westwood families?
While D’Amario may have a different take, of course, friends of the families claim fractures in the company all stem from Carlo D’Amario himself.
Indeed, some say his relationship with Vivienne, who hailed from Tintwistle, Derbyshire, soured as far back as 2016. But it didn’t start out that way.
A former fabric buyer from Milan, who had a brief stint at a Russian university as part of a study programme with the Italian Communist Party, Carlo spent seven years at the Italian fashion house Fiorucci before setting up his own PR company, Casanova.
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