Riot and custom meet in a brand new Vivienne Westwood exhibition

In a now-infamous phase of car-crash TV from 1988, Vivienne Westwood is interviewed (and largely ridiculed) by Sue Lawley on BBC discuss present Wogan. The studio viewers, inspired by the presenter, laughs mockingly all through the clip, as a number of fashions, together with the choreographer Michael Clark and Westwood muse Sara Stockbridge, seem carrying seems to be from the designer’s A/W 1988 assortment, Time Machine. Peter Smithson, who was ten years outdated on the time, was fully enthralled. ‘I did not realise who Vivienne Westwood was however I distinctly bear in mind seeing the fashions and pondering they had been completely unbelievable,’ he says at this time. ‘I needed to expertise the enjoyment and confidence that that they had on their faces.’

Standing in the primary exhibition area on the Bowes Museum in County Durham, the place ‘Vivienne Westwood: Insurgent – Storyteller – Visionary’ has simply opened (till 6 September 2026), the science teacher-cum-associate curator, and Westwood tremendous collector of 30 years, is surrounded by mannequins wearing items from his huge private archive (Manchester Artwork Gallery, Trend Museum Tub and some different personal collectors have additionally loaned gadgets, however Smithson’s assortment is by far essentially the most distinguished).

‘Vivienne Westwood: Insurgent – Storyteller – Visionary’ at The Bowes Museum

Curated in collaboration with the museum’s Rachel Whitworth, the brand new retrospective options 40 full ensembles in addition to framed particular person clothes, footwear, equipment, present invitations and journal covers, and spills into the museum’s Trend and Textiles gallery the place rolls of material, a stitching machine and calico toiles evoke a working atelier. In the primary area, the place Westwood designs from the mid-80s by means of to the 2000s are displayed chronologically, a sequence of work, sculptures, armour and different objects from the museum’s personal mammoth assortment are woven into the exhibition’s design, echoing the texture of a conventional salon.

‘The very best bits from her seminal collections are the place she’s received that excellent mix of historical past, artwork and tradition,’ continues Smithson, highlighting Westwood’s deep affection for the visible arts. ‘What she does is sew it collectively seamlessly with that golden thread of storytelling. And that is what I received keen on, unpicking that story.’ Certainly, the designer, who died aged 81 in 2022, was wildly captivated with 18th-century work particularly, championed the museum as a website of training, and famously described the Wallace Assortment in London as ‘the best artwork faculty within the nation’. Her personal relationship with the Bowes Museum started in 2006, when she attended the opening of ‘Positive & Modern: Lace from the Blackbourne Assortment’, having contributed three clothes to the present; the worldwide touring exhibition, ‘Vivienne Westwood Footwear: An Exhibition 1973-2011’, adopted in 2011.

Whereas the brand new present is basically comprised of full seems to be, Smithson notes that every piece was sourced individually. His first formal buy as a collector, after carrying the designer ‘to loss of life’ in his early twenties, was a vibrant crown with a pretend ermine trim from the A/W 1987 assortment, ‘Harris Tweed’ (Stockbridge wore an analogous model on Wogan in 1988). ‘That’s as Westwood because it comes,’ asserts Smithson. ‘With that assortment, Westwood needed to do type of an affectionate parody of all issues English and higher class; she produced it on two home stitching machines in a council flat. That one look incorporates 5 unmistakably iconic Westwood items: the crown, produced by Stephen Jones, the fake fur cape, her Stature of Liberty corset, a beehive crinoline. It is actually vital.’

Elsewhere he factors out a glance from the ‘Portrait’ assortment (A/W 1990), for which Westwood returned to the Wallace Assortment. ‘These items are completely timeless, but it surely’s the extent of thought that she places into issues. She needed to characterize each facet of 18th-century portray, and so she launched the massive silk scarf, as a result of when the fashions walked down the catwalk, the silk moved as if it was just like the fluidity of paint,’ he says, reflecting on a ‘Shepherd’ print scarf that includes François Boucher’s Daphnis and Chloe (1743). Of a Boulle print moleskin costume, displayed with the headscarf and three strings of pearls, he explains that ‘Westwood put the ink on the velvet costume thick and let it dry, in order that when the velvet was stretched, the gold ink would crackle to characterize the gilding on frames.

‘That is what turned identified within the very early Nineteen Nineties because the principal boy look,’ Smithson continues, standing beside an outfit from ‘Voyage to Cythera’ (A/W 1989). The gathering took its title from Jean-Antoine Watteau’s The Embarkation for Cythera, painted in 1717 and characterising the carefree new temper that arrived from the darkness of Louis XIV’s loss of life in 1715; the look in query references the spirit of the scene, with the now iconic fig leaf tights, a ‘Princess’ fake leopard jacket and the ‘Precept Boy’ white shirt with framing element. ‘It’s completely traditional, a enjoyable piece of Westwood design. I do not know if anyone else would assume to get some flesh-coloured tights and put a mirrored Perspex fig leaf over it. However they’re all items of artwork [the clothes in the show], and so they’ve received tales to inform. I prefer to assume they arrive alive at evening and have a superb social gathering.’