Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, died Thursday at age 81.

Westwood’s eponymous fashion house announced her death on social media platforms, saying she died peacefully. A cause was not disclosed.

“Vivienne continued to do the things she loved, up until the last moment, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better,” the statement said.

Westwood’s fashion career began in the 1970s when her radical approach to urban street style took the world by storm. But she went on to enjoy a long career highlighted by a string of triumphant runway shows and museum exhibitions.

The name Westwood became synonymous with style and attitude even as she shifted focus from year to year, her range vast and her work never predictable.

As her stature grew, she seemed to transcend fashion. The young woman who had scorned the British establishment eventually became one of its leading lights, even as she kept her hair dyed that trademark bright shade of orange.

Andrew Bolton, curator of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, said Westwood and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren — her onetime partners — “gave the punk movement a look, a style, and it was so radical it broke from anything in the past.”