LONDON — The invitation to the memorial service for Vivienne Westwood got here with a final particular command from the late designer herself: “When doubtful, costume up!”

The congregation at Southwark Cathedral on Thursday afternoon — the eve of London Trend Week — had clearly taken these phrases to coronary heart. Attendees spilled into the historic churchyard in white pinstripe bustiers, devil-horn tiaras and strings of assertion pearls. Between majestic bouquets of purple heather, thistles and mimosa impressed by the Scottish Highlands, the pews heaved with splashes of daring Westwood tartan, embroidered bomber and biker jackets, PVC platforms, sequined tuxedos, slashes of coloured eyeliner and oversize pink prime hats.

Designers together with Victoria Beckham, Paul Smith, Zandra Rhodes and Marc Jacobs arrived to pay tribute to Ms. Westwood, who died in December at 81. So, too, did the supermodel Kate Moss and the Vogue editors Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful. In different phrases, the nice and the great of style royalty had come for a closing farewell to the queen of British style, an anti-establishment, anticapitalist pioneer of punk who famously accepted her Order of the British Empire at Buckingham Palace in 1992 in a finely tailor-made darkish grey skirt swimsuit — and no knickers.

“How can I presumably chart the cultural influence of one among this nation’s best designers?” the actress Helena Bonham Carter puzzled from the pulpit. Her eulogy ranged from her first-ever buy of a Vivienne Westwood merchandise at age 15 (a white shirt from the designer’s Pirate assortment and an identical cummerbund so she might appear like Adam Ant) to the “obscene” quantity of garments she owned by Ms. Westwood (seven clothes within the Cocotte type alone), and included an anecdote in regards to the time a reporter requested why she wore solely Westwood on the pink carpet.

“As a result of she’s a genius,” Ms. Bonham Carter recalled saying in response. “You don’t have any concept what number of concepts and decisions have gone into all the things she designs. She offers us on the spot physique engineering with no lipo or food regimen.” She referred to as Ms. Westwood “a real feminist and lover of ladies” who understood the facility of protest and empowerment, channeled via each style design and a lifetime of activism.

“Whereas Karl Lagerfeld tried to marry his cat, you drove a tank onto the prime minister’s entrance garden as a part of an anti-fracking protest,” she added, to laughter from the group. “Not many style designers do this.”

The service started with Abba’s “Slipping Via My Fingers” performed by the Arnfield Brass, a band from northern England that rehearses lower than a mile from the Derbyshire village of Tintwistle, the place Ms. Westwood grew up. Superstar buddies like Chrissie Hynde and Nick Cave sang in honor of Ms. Westwood, whereas Gordon Swire, her brother, shared a transferring collection of video interviews he recorded of his sister earlier than she died through which she recalled an extremely blissful childhood within the inexperienced rolling Derbyshire hills — the place she is now buried and which she referred to as “probably the most lovely place on this planet.”

Many relations spoke movingly in regards to the designer’s life past style, together with her husband, Andreas Kronthaler, a onetime scholar and longtime design associate, who described the second he realized he can be together with his “darling lady” without end (she was sporting, he recalled, a skintight chocolate-brown stretch cat swimsuit and pink leopard jacket with trailing silk scarves for a Vienna museum journey), and her sons, Ben Westwood and Joseph Corré. Mr. Corré proudly described a mom who was “an exquisite trainer and freedom fighter” and wished to alter the world for the higher, including that she had left him with a really particular and moderately formidable to-do record from her deathbed in December: “Cease battle, cease local weather change and finish capitalism.”

The memorial spanned the exceptional lifetime of a self-taught iconoclast who modified modern conceptions of how clothes might be used to specific — or insurgent towards — social and political norms and form group identification. Little surprise that this season of London Trend Week is being held in her honor. Ms. Westwood’s household has began a nonprofit, the Vivienne Basis, that can deal with points associated to local weather change, battle, human rights and capitalism.

The ultimate tribute of the service got here from Cora Corré, Ms. Westwood’s granddaughter, who stood resplendent in her grandmother’s designs as she urged the group to proceed honoring a legacy rooted in insurrection and questioning the established order.

“We are able to solely actually contact on the traits of the phenomenon that’s Vivienne Westwood: a grandmother, mom, sister and pal, a trainer, an artist and a designer,” Ms. Corré stated. “It would by no means be sufficient.”