The British House’s archives constituted the foundation for Andreas Kronthaler’s instructive and vivid collection. Vivienne Westwood sadly passed away on December 29, 2022, leaving behind over forty years of disruptive and unconventional fashion. On March 4, her partner, Andreas Kronthaler, showcased his first runway collection for the label since her demise, encompassing an assortment of pieces saturated with Westwood’s quintessential punk vogue.
Vivienne is considered to be the propagandist of the art of punk style. The label’s Fall-Winter 2023-2024 collection was among the most anticipated of this Paris Fashion Week. Westwood’s ingenuous presence reverberated profoundly in Andreas’ collection evidencing how unshakeable her legacy is. The selection presented several of Vivienne’s signatures, including a multitude of prints, high boots alongside dominating heels, broad stiffened skirts, accessorised with brooches, tartan layers juxtaposed against corsets, poetic lingerie and plenty of tweeds.
This collection beautifully accentuated the formidable essence of the Westwood house, the mantle of which Kronthaler bears. “Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence”, Vivienne famously quoted from Bertrand Russell in her documentary on fashion and its impact on culture and society. Those words laid the foundation of her creativity as she scandalised an entire generation of adolescent radicals who had become insipid by minimalism’s bias.
Malcolm McLaren and Andrew Bolton, two of Viv’s former coworkers, claim that she “gave the punk movement a look, a style, and it was so radical it broke from anything in the past. She introduced postmodernism with ripped shirts, safety pins, and provocative slogans. The punk movement has never dissipated; it’s become part of our fashion vocabulary,” remarked Bolton. Cora Corré, Vivienne’s granddaughter, closed the show, Tintwistle, wearing an ivory, lacy outfit and stacked platform heels. Ahead of the show, Andreas Kronthaler shared a poem to honour the loving memory of Vivienne which encapsulates the rakish magnificence of the collection, “You once said to me that you can take everything away, just leave me my platform shoes because one can’t do without them.
Maybe the most important thing you ever taught me was to put the woman on a pedestal.”
The world lost one of its most genius iconoclasts on December 29 when she was 81 years old. Viv’s inexhaustive activism and radical politics was ubiquitous through her six decade long career. She strived to erase boundaries of conformity and rewrote the book of normcore aesthetics characterised by punk style – intentionally ripped fabrics, references to bondage, S&M, and other fetish subcultures. Vivienne’s visual essentials caused a significant divergence from the romanticism that dominated the later 1960s fashion. Her earlier collections embodied a sort of jacquerie against the courteous English society, thus revolutionising the perception of punk aesthetic forevermore.
Irrespective of punk’s awareness or intellect or reification, it is negligent to not acknowledge how its ethos has permeated modern contemporary society and profoundly altered the way in which one approaches art or its exceeding commodification.
Furthermore, also revealing the inevitable progression of a counterculture wherein it once defined the established conventions of a mainstream culture, albeit is leveraged against the cultural mores it aimed to subvert, in the aftermath. Vivienne wrestled with the dichotomy between employing fashion as a means of social commentary and the intrinsic exclusivity of quiet luxury. She also spoke out vociferously against the damaging effects of excessive consumerism.
Vivienne’s art redefines aspects of history with an aim to render it pertinent to the modern time and context. Especially her Anglomania collection from 1993 which attributed to Naomi Campbell’s infamous fall, demonstrated how Westwood merged traditionalist inclinations with her punk aesthetics. Models wore overpowering platform heels with tartan suits. Her footwear, in particular, was a far cry from the utilitarian shoes that were often paired together with sophisticated clothing. This blend of paradoxical themes was quintessential to punk aestheticism that relates to contradictory allusions in fashion, music or art.
When Westwood opened SEX, a retail outlet on King’s Road which she ran with Malcolm McLaren, the supervisor for Sex Pistols, it soon became a cultural epicentre for the escalating punk landscape in London. Vivienne initially sold handcrafted creations that emerged from the creative vision of like minded designers she employed.
One can see how she was driven to acquire a more nuanced understanding of the global fashion community and to contribute to powering her activism into the Climate Revolution project. Her endurance to foster a debate and elevate public consciousness still persists in her legacy.
Text by Asmita Singh
Image Courtesy: Vivienne Westwood Archives, Jean-Marie Perier, and Paolo Colaiocco
Find out more about Vivienne Westwood:
