The grande dame of British fashion Vivienne Westwood died two years ago aged 81, but the fashion empire that bears her name rolls on, carrying its near 50-year history with it. Some of that legacy arrives in New Zealand this month in the exhibition Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery, opening at Te Papa.
It’s the latest museum retrospective of Westwood’s creativity: the first was at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum 20 years ago. Exhibitions of Westwood shoes and corsets followed.
The jewellery show, which has its global debut in Wellington before heading to Shanghai, provides a fresh overview of Westwood’s career, its eras and eccentricities. After all, jewellery was where she started.
While still a young primary school teacher, Westwood hand-made and sold jewellery in London markets before her foray into fashion with Malcolm McLaren in the 1970s as provocateurs of the punk era. Establishing herself as a designer in her own right in the following decade, her jewellery collections became part of the brand’s identity.
Alex Krenn, senior accessories and special projects designer at Vivienne Westwood London, says the exhibition “highlights Vivienne Westwood’s work not only as a designer and activist but a wider story of British culture and heritage”.
Asked why the exhibition is opening at Te Papa, he says, “Te Papa exhibitions are rooted in storytelling and culture. They bring to life the artefacts or art they are exhibiting. Vivienne always approached her collections in that way. Every piece tells a story.’’
Te Papa senior curator culture and history Claire Regnault describes the exhibition as “like a love letter to Vivienne Westwood’'. It features one-off pieces that have been rarely seen in one setting.
“It will resonate here partly because we have such strong contemporary jewellery makers and such a strong community that embraces their works. We’re good jewellery people. The show will surprise people in all sorts of ways and really draw them in.’’
Regnault says what is not so well known about Westwood is her reverence for art, literature and fashion history.
When designing some of her collections, she mined one of the greatest repositories of aristocratic excess – London’s Wallace Collection – for inspiration and often sent her staff there.
“She once said the Wallace Collection was ‘the greatest art school in this country’. She was an avid gallery goer and once said that if she didn’t go to art galleries, she wouldn’t be able to design anything.’’
The exhibition covers more than four decades of her career and features about 550 pieces representing half the Vivienne Westwood jewellery archive. Spread across eight rooms, the display will also feature 15 or so garment ensembles.
The intro room will include clothes and jewellery worn by Westwood the activist on various campaigns she became involved in. The origins room will showcase her early years, when she began designing with second husband McLaren at Sex, their 70s shop on Kings Rd in London. It became known for stocking their anti-establishment, provocative T-shirts, biker and sexual-fetish clothing, which became the look of the UK punk movement spearheaded by the Sex Pistols, who McLaren famously managed.
Westwood once said, “I was messianic about punk, seeing if one could put a spoke in the system in some way.”
Another room will be dedicated to the orb, which became her logo. The “wonderland” room will showcase jewellery designs that are childlike and fantastical. The “Lisette’' earrings – kitsch, in pastel colours with hearts and smiley faces – will be on show in a glittering jewellery box, near pieces from her luxury 2021 Teddy Bear jewellery collection.
Westwood also designed snail brooches and other jewels based on precise snail reproductions, which featured in her Spring/Summer 2002 collections and were inspired by Greek mythology and 18th-century French artists François Boucher and Antoine Watteau.
Regnault says the designer was particularly influenced by the paintings of Boucher and famously put photographic reproductions of his paintings onto her corsets in 2009 – they’re now coveted by Westwood collectors. Her love of the 18th and 19th centuries also spilled over into her jewellery designs: her three-row pearl drop choker made its debut in a 1990 collection, influenced by 18th-century art and furniture in the Wallace Collection.
Krenn rates Westwood’s 1990s period – when she began working with her much-younger third husband, Andreas Kronthaler, the creative director of the label today – as a highlight. “It was a sparkling moment. High fashion collections were shown in Paris on supermodels. Vivienne and Andreas looked to 17th- and 18th-century salon culture and Renaissance art for ideas, and they had a deep interest in historical dress, classical paintings, and the jewellery of the time.’’
Another of Krenn’s favourites was the broken string of pearls. “To imagine a string of pearls breaking in front of you, disappearing across the floor, panicking to collect them all, and here it is strung back together. A moment in time, standing still. It’s amazing.’’
Her chain and pearl necklaces are currently a cult favourite on social media. British It-girl Bella Hadid is often spotted wearing a Westwood pearl choker, Westwood’s jewellery is also worn by men, and she was known for her gender-fluid approach to clothes design.
I was messianic about punk, seeing if one could put a spoke in the system in some way.
For one Wellington Westwood superfan, Chrissy O, owner of Cuba St vintage clothing store Hunters and Collectors, the exhibition can’t open soon enough. O has five Westwood suits and dozens of other pieces. She has long felt inspired by the late designer – not only by her clothing, but by her activism and desire to use fashion as a political platform, especially about climate change.
“Vivienne is a lot of things to me,” O says. “She’s my clothes and she’s my value system. I wear her clothes and by doing so it’s honouring her. I love that she was a punk and she was political and cared about the planet. She didn’t care so much about the norm, and her clothes were thought-provoking.
“Vivienne showed that you could have your own brain and mind and make a whole brand around it. And then she used fashion as an international platform for her politics, to talk about global warming and power politics.
“She thought the masses should go to art galleries and she used that to influence her silhouettes, which I love about her. I love that her designs were based on historical knowledge – like the painting designs on her corsets. Art is design and she takes the gallery to the street.’’
Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery, Te Papa, January 17-April 27.
