Background and career
Joseph Ferdinand Corré (born 30 November 1967) is a British activist and businessman, who co-founded Agent Provocateur in 1994.
Corré was born in Clapham, south London, the son of British fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols. Corré's surname, which was not adopted but given at birth, derives from his father's maternal grandmother, a Sephardic Jew from Portugal. As a child, he wore his mother's designs and regarded the Sex Pistols as his favourite band, despite a poor relationship with frontman/singer John Lydon.
Corré and his wife Serena Rees established the shop Agent Provocateur in 1994. The shop originally sold other designers' pieces, until Corré created their own lingerie line. Since then, the company has expanded to 30 shops in 14 countries. Rees left Corré for ex-Clash bassist Paul Simonon in 2007, and in the same year the to-be divorced couple agreed to sell Agent Provocateur to private equity house 3i for £60m. In June 2007, Corré was appointed an MBE for his services to the fashion industry in the Queen's Birthday Honours list. He rejected the award in protest at Prime Minister Tony Blair's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan which Corré said had caused suffering and at the erosion in civil rights in the UK during Blair's term. In 2008, he opened the independent boutique A Child of the Jago named after the 19th century novel by Arthur Morrison. The venture was a partnership with British street-wear fashion entrepreneur Simon "Barnzley" Armitage, modelled on the retail outlets run by Corré's parents in the 1970s/80s. Armitage left the business in 2013 and is no longer referenced in the company's history. In 2010, he was appointed brand director of the cosmetics company Illamasqua.
On McLaren's death in a Swiss medical centre from a rare form of cancer in April 2010, Corré said: "It was hard for me because he never wanted to do the emotional stuff that comes with being a parent. He ran away from it and I found that hard to take. We had a difficult relationship, but it was all right in the end. I went to Switzerland and we said what we had to say and we made our peace. I'm really glad I did that. It was such a release for both of us". Corré organised his father's funeral, at which McLaren was buried in a coffin sprayed with the slogan "Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die" (the title of one of his shops). The ceremony was attended by celebrities including Bob Geldof and Tracey Emin, and accompanied by a public procession to punk songs, including the Sid Vicious version of "My Way". In 2012 probate was granted to Young Kim, McLaren's girlfriend during the last 16 years of his life, by McLaren's will, which Corré had contested because he was excluded from it.
Corré is registered as the administrative officer of malcolmmclaren.com. In 2012 he bought the domain name from Paul August Nordstrom of Singapore for $750; August had worked for McLaren and in 1997 registered the domain to himself without McLaren's knowledge. August, who said in 2013 he could "no longer recall specifically why he placed his own name as registrant", had previously refused to pass the domain to the Malcolm McLaren Estate.
Prior to the 2015 general election, he was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas. Together with his mother, he publicly campaigned for the release of WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
