Mister Fancy Pants fights back

Midlife Special

When Joe Corre's wife ran off with a rock star, he was left in sole charge of the couple's multimillion-pound lingerie empire, Agent Provocateur. Now, the 40-year-old son of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood has a radical new plan for his business - and frilly knickers don't come into it

You can take the boy out of the King's Road, but you can't take the King's Road out of the boy. If Joseph Corre, co-founder of the lingerie company Agent Provocateur and the son of punk progenitors Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, grew up imbued with the rebellious, DIY spirit of 1976, then he has only grown more discontent and agitated with age. After turning down his MBE last year - it was too good an opportunity to snub Blair's government - now he is making the long and somewhat unexpected leap from re- inventing fancy pants to addressing human-rights abuse.

"Human rights is the issue that businesses shy away from - because usually, at some stage along the chain, some businesses are making a lot of money from human-rights abuse. Then there is this idea that you can't mix business and politics. And that's total crap. The two are intrinsically linked," he exclaims. "When there was meant to be this march against the Iraq war, there was all this talk from lots of fashion companies who were going to give their shows an anti-war theme, and do their shop windows with it, they all bottled out. I think I was the only bloody one."

There is a slight belligerence to Corre's tone that suits him: in his bespoke Teddy Boy-ish tailoring - Bill Haley by way of Milan - he looks ready to pick a fight. Although some men might disappear in the cavernous boardroom of Agent Provocateur's west London HQ - a high-ceilinged Georgian building with a smattering of modern furniture, punk memorabilia and racks of frilly, Carry On... confections - Corre's angry itch manages to fill it. He doesn't really want to be doing this interview. But Corre, 40, is set to make a solo stand again and his opinions needs to be given vent.

His latest project, Humanade, which launches at the end of this month with a charity auction offering a catwalk modelling experience for Vivienne Westwood, is a grant-giving and fundraising trust set up by Corre with chartered accountants Wenham Major and the lawyer John Crabtree; it has already started funding legal representation for Guantanamo Bay inmates. More broadly it is a stab at, as Corre puts it, "making businesses realise, as many still fail to do, that social responsibility can be good business".

What it is most certainly not, Corre makes abundantly clear, is about giving himself or Agent Provocateur added profile: business needs to know that "just by focusing a little bit of money in the right direction you can make things happen, and that's amazing. I don't want this charity thing to be about me. I don't need press. I don't need to do this fucking interview," he says testily. "It just might make companies think about themselves a bit, or make people think more carefully about where they spend their money."

Humanade is just one of the projects Corre feels free to pursue since, late last year, his life underwent something of an overhaul. First, he separated from his wife and Agent Provocateur co-founder Serena Rees, the mother of his 10-year old daughter Cora. The duo had long been a glamour couple fixture on the London social circuit, counting Sam Taylor-Wood, Elton John, Sadie Frost and Kate Moss - who starred in last year's Agent Provocateur advertising campaign reportedly for a fraction of her normal fee - all as good friends. But then Serena had an affair with her best friend Tricia's rock star husband - Paul Simonon, formerly of the Clash.

In the past, Corre has presented himself as something of a mentor to Rees, with his fashion background meaning he inevitably took the lead in shaping the business. But her affair meant that, understandably, continuing to work together would be impossible: they separated out the work to keep out of each other's way, but it became clear one of them would have to go. And it was pretty clear who that would be. Not the creative source. "Working with her was ' both a pressure and a pleasure - all those emotions over 10 years," Corre notes. "But it's difficult to think of now - I haven't been working with Serena for over a year. And I have to say that I don't miss it. At all."

Coincidental to recent events perhaps, Corre says he has lost a lot of weight over the past few months, so he can now start wearing his mother's menswear again. Not being able to find anything he liked in the interim, however, got him thinking - and while Corre remains creative director of Agent Provocateur, his new situation also means he can turn his attention to the planning of "a few surprises which will tread a different path to that well-worn one of rolling out a brand that every fucking brand does, which to me is slightly boring". Among them, look forward to a menswear line, now in the pipeline. He's not giving away any details. But it would be impressive if it had the same impact as his foray into the frilly stuff.