“Vivienne Westwood: The Personal Collection” at Christie‘s London
One card of The Big Picture, Vivienne’s Playing Cards. Photo: Birgitta Huse.
“I want you to help me save the world, I can’t do it all on my own.”
“Westwood is present everywhere in the showrooms. From oversized photos she looks at us while studying her stockings and other accessories, she models for us en plain air, and she seems to wait for us while leaning on a scaffolding.”
“Altogether a must-see exhibition which certainly is a fascinating highlight of the year 2024!”
“Vivienne Westwood: The Personal Collection”
at Christie’s London
★★★★★
WRITTEN BY DR BIRGITTA HUSE, 13.06.2024
Sitting on a fence? Not at all in this case! Which fashion lover, dress historian, Vivienne Westwood admirer, auction fan and cultural history researcher would want to miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance to spend some time with an entire collection of Westwood’s personal garments, shoes and jewellery from her fashion house?
Christie’s showcases “the late designer’s own wardrobe and features some of the most iconic looks she created and wore during the last four decades of her life”. The earliest piece to be seen is from the ‘Witches’ collection for Autumn-Winter 1983/84. Part I of the auction on 25th of June will include 94 lots of fashion and “The Big Picture – Vivienne’s Playing Cards”. Part II runs as an online auction of over 170 additional pieces from Westwood’s wardrobe. “I want you to help me save the world, I can’t do it all on my own” said Dame Vivienne Westwood. Therefore, the funds raised by the sale will go to causes she supported throughout her life: The Vivienne Foundation, Amnesty International, Médecines Sans Frontières and Greenpeace.
Christie’s London. Photo: Birgitta Huse
Westwood at Christies London. Photo: Birgitta Huse
The collection presentation invites to stroll through a parcours of dresses, suits, and costumes which are thematically grouped and presented on mannequins with wooden hands placed across scaffolding-like, open, and movable containers. Headlines are “I am expensive”, “Innocent” and “Wild Beauty” for example. The sensation in between these installations lies in somehow emulate the feeling of taking part in the work in progress of a fashion studio. This form of presentation also lends itself to commemorate Westwood’s life which was filled with activities and movement.
Westwood is present everywhere in the showrooms. From oversized photos she looks at us while studying her stockings and other accessories, she models for us en plain air, and she seems to wait for us while leaning on a scaffolding. She speaks to us via quotes which are written over the walls.
Exhibition view with Vivienne Westwood. Photo: Birgitta Huse.
Exhibition view with “Dressed to Scale” AutumnWinter 1989/99 (second from right). Photo: Birgitta Huse
One of my personal highlights of Christie’s pre-auction exhibition of Westwood’s personal collection is a pair of hats. One of them consists of feathers, the second is a straw hat with coloured long ribbons springing from one point at the top of the hat. The straw hat seems like a differently formed version of those hats which Indigenous male authorities wear in the Highlands of Chiapas in Mexico – the longstanding region of my social anthropological research about Indigenous textiles and fashion.
In 2017, Dame Vivienne Westwood designed a pack of playing cards as “A Strategy 2 save the World”. “The prints poignantly shed light on pressing issues facing humankind, such as climate change, social inequality and human rights – concerns that remained at the forefront of Dame Vivienne’s mind” – it says in the exhibition. “Shortly before she died, she selected ten of her most powerful graphics to be enlarged and set about signing the precious large-scale ‘cards’ on which these designs would be printed posthumously.”
Altogether a must-see exhibition which certainly is a fascinating highlight of the year 2024!
Vivienne Westwood: The Personal Collection is on show at Christie’s London from 14.06.2024 to 24.06.2024.