Some designers influence your clothes, others, the way you think. Some, like Dame Vivienne Westwood, go a step further, giving you show notes to pore over on your way home, names to look up, exhibitions to visit, lines such as “Plastic kills the albatross” and “Au$terity is stupid” listed under a rallying cry of Intellectuals Unite.
Decades after she first kicked against whatever there was to kick against, Westwood is still waging war — no longer just against boredom or mediocrity but, of course, with her much publicized stances against fracking and climate change (never boring or mediocre in themselves). She has become, over the course of five decades, the go-to designer for the insurrectionist-about-town and this collection is no different — typically grandiose, loosely Renaissance-inspired with flashes of metallic magic like armor on the (properly) diverse cast. It’s fun and self-referential — a Best Of, an Immaculate Collection — but how could it not be when you’ve been doing this for so long and, frankly, your the jackets are as good as they are? Write it on your backpack with a Sharpie: It’s not just your clothes, it’s your attitude.
Credits
Text Matthew Whitehouse
Photography Jason Lloyd-Evans