The couple would later be known as the godparents of punk, and Ms. Westwood would earn an Order of the British Empire award for her contribution to fashion.
“Moral discomfort,” Cathy Horyn wrote in The New York Times in 1999, “was their pleasure.”
Ms. Mooney, a muscular former ballet student and track star, became the living embodiment of the store and also its gatekeeper, embracing its anarchic ethos — particularly its rubber wear — with gusto and flair. She was an imposing figure, her hair swooped up in a stiff bouffant, her eyes swathed in black like a superhero’s mask.
Commuting each day by train from her parents’ home in East Sussex, she invited outrage and often cleared entire cars, sporting outfits like a see-through ensemble with bra, underpants and fishnet stockings she had customized by burning holes in them with a cigarette.
Sometimes the conductors would move her for her safety into the first-class car, where she would find herself surrounded by businessmen pretending to read their newspapers.