Fashion Victim: The naked truth behind the rumour

Nov 20 2008 by Emma Johnson, Liverpool Daily Post

MY FAVOURITE story from planet fashion this week has to be that Pamela Anderson has signed a reported six-figure deal to be the new face of Vivienne Westwood.

So far, neither side have come out to confirm or deny the story – why would you when you can let the rumour mill churn out acres of newsprint from India to Indianapolis? However, Vivienne is reported as saying: “I can't speak about it yet. But anything I would say would be completely positive.”

That’s a yes then.

The deal would certainly clear up the business of that appearance by the Baywatch babe at Vivienne’s London Fashion Week Show back in September.

Back then, Pammie, whose most famous assets were positively bursting out of one of the Dame’s classic corseted numbers on the night, had seemed a rather surprising addition to a guest list stuffed with London’s cool kids and members of the fashion aristocracy.

Perched next to the likes of Agent Provocateur model Daisy Lowe, Queen of Cool Kate Moss and the super-polished burlesque star Dita Von Teese, not to mention some unknown man wearing a white mask, the pin-up had looked for all the world like a centrefold out of water.

After all, Pammie, with her bleached blonde hair and permatan is as American as apple pie (I don’t care if she was born in Canada) and no designer is more quintessentially British than Westwood.

So the story goes, the thrice married mother-of-two will appear in Vivienne’s spring/ summer 2009 campaign, for which the pictures have already been shot in LA, after Vivienne fell for the model, actress, mother, entrepreneur, philanthropist and activist’s (Pam’s own description) “quirkiness” at a party.

Wouldn’t you have loved to have been a Red Label-clad fly on the wall at that one? I can just imagine Vivienne – who talks often about how she never watches television – having to ask one of the most Googled women in the world who she was.

I have to say, for anyone to manage to get Ms Anderson to wear clothes at all is an achievement in itself. An icon she may be, but she is rarely a style icon.

Most often spotted in cut-off denims and Ugg boots – the last time the former Playmate got involved in high fashion, she ended up naked in the window of Stella McCartney’s London store. And earlier this year she had no qualms about dancing naked at Hugh Hefner’s 82nd birthday party.

However, Vivienne did once say: “Fashion is all about sex”. I suppose you could say the same about Pam.