“My God is that it?”: The awful moment Vivienne Westwood heard Oasis for the first time

Posted On May 23, 2025May 23, 2025

“There’s not a day goes by where I don’t wish I could rock a parka like that man,” Noel Gallagher said of his brother in the documentary, Supersonic. Because, even though they never meant to, in the 1990s, Oasis became unlikely fashion icons. Loosely clad trousers and outerwear straight from your PE lost property box, they became poster boys for ’90s counterculture.

Obviously, their music was largely responsible for the emergence of Britain’s new alternative era, and they undoubtedly captured a zeitgeist. But in the void they created, offshoots of influence were born. People weren’t just slipping Definitely Maybe into their stereos and turning it up to full volume, they were doing it wearing Adidas trainers, Umbro training tops and mod cuts. 

As their star rose, a movement grew with great urgency, and soon the Gallagher brothers were thrust into the parties of the elite. Rubbing shoulders with models, actors and, on one famous occasion, politicians, at gatherings all across the capital. In fact, the boys can’t have helped but be giddy when they formed a somewhat annoying relationship with Paul McCartney’s fashionista daughter, Stella, taking their admiration of music royalty from external to internal with one swift sip of champagne. 

But while many of the London socialite elite were fetishising the working-class aesthetic for the benefit of their clothing line, one famous designer was having none of it. It’s hard to tell whether the Gallagher brothers would actually care; nevertheless, Vivienne Westwood was less than impressed with their music. She said, “I mean, talk about people like Oasis,” she said, adding, “I heard that in a taxi once and thought: ‘Who is that? My God, is that it?’ Terrible.”

But she contextualised her opinion by comparing their music to The Sex Pistols, stating, “I don’t think anything came anywhere near it”. Westwood’s take symbolises an age-old generational divide, where music, no matter the delivery or performance, seemingly gets worse when you’re no longer part of the generation it was designed for. 

In the 1970s, John Lydon led a band that spoke to a subculture of a disenfranchised generation, platforming ideas that would undoubtedly inform the creativity of Westwood and other designers alike, whose entire professional objective was to create something innovative and provocative.

Oasis was no different, and it’s no coincidence that their music seemed to overlap with the fashion movements of their time. But perhaps Westwood’s personal bias robbed her of a very clear parallel between The Sex Pistols and Oasis. 

Owen Morris, who mixed Definitely Maybe, brazenly told Liam that his vocals sounded like the lovechild of John Lennon and Lydon, which, despite the loftiness of the reference, is undoubtedly rooted in some truth. It was as primal and rebellious as Lydon’s, but as twisted and enunciated as Lennon’s, providing another unique insight into British culture. It’s truly hard to understand where Westwood comes from when discarding Oasis as terrible while lauding the work of The Sex Pistols, but then again, I’ve seen some of the clothes models wear on runways and have no idea what any of it means.

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