Dame Anna Wintour has paid fulsome tribute to iconic British fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood, whose death, aged 81, was announced Thursday. “Dame Vivienne Westwood was an extraordinary talent: an innovative and influential designer, and an iconoclast who pursued every belief and passion with a rare fervor,” Wintour, editor in chief of U.S. Vogue and Global Chief Content Officer of Condé Nast, said in a statement sent to The Daily Beast. “One of my very favorite Costume Institute shows, Anglomania, celebrated British fashion, but really it was a celebration of Vivienne. She was at the heart of it all, the designer that every single designer wanted to meet at the Gala. She was a provocateur, and one with a deep understanding of what made her homeland tick: that peculiarly British blend of history, class, sex, Romanticism, and tradition, which she worked up into the most magical and imaginative of clothes.”