Dame Vivienne Westwood in a suspended giant bird cage in protest for Julian Assange at London’s Old Bailey in July 2020.Credit:Getty
In an interview withThe Sydney Morning HeraldandThe Age,Stella Assange said she first met Westwood at Julian’s 40th birthday party when he was under house arrest in Norfolk in 2011,and Westwood had remained his friend and supporter “until the end”.
A decade later,Westwood attended celebrations for Julian’s 50th birthday held in his absence because he was in jail.
“Vivienne is irreplaceable. She was a huge friend,a great supporter,and it’s an enormous loss,” Stella said in an interview by phone from Spain,where she spent Christmas with her 91-year-old father as she said she could not visit her husband in prison.
Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson,Julian Assange’s father John Shipton and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood march in February 2020 in London.Credit:Getty
“She was such a generous spirit and she really,really cared about the future of the world and future generations and she really saw all of these issues as justice and truth and the destruction of the planet as interrelated causes.
“She used her profile and her fashion to fight for the causes she believed in.”
Stella said she got to know Westwood well during her husband’s seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy,where he lived as an asylum seeker to avoid being extradited to Sweden,where authorities wanted to question him over now-lapsed sexual assault allegations.