Vivienne Westwood RTW Spring 2024

Samantha Conti
·2 min read
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Team Vivienne Westwood paid tribute to the late designer with a powerful collection that was photographed, and filmed, in one of her favorite places, Shakespeare’s Globe in London.

Models, including designer Miguel Adrover, recited lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” in a variety of languages, as they roamed around the stage and posed in the theater’s dressing rooms, corridors and elevators.

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It was a poignant moment. Westwood, who died last December, and the team had wanted to photograph at the Globe for a while, and the designer had history there.

Shakespeare’s heyday in the late 16th and early 17th centuries had long been a source of inspiration for Westwood, and the designer performed her speech for Letters to the Earth, a global environmental campaign, at the theater in 2021.

The collection’s shoot, and accompanying short film, embraced Shakespeare’s gender-fluid characters and use of impersonation and disguise to move his plots along.

“Everybody is who they want to be,” the brand said of the spring images and film.

There was nothing costume-y about it. Instead, this was a lineup of dramatic, wearable clothes in a muted color palette that took its cues from the paintings of Francois Boucher, another of Westwood’s favorite creators.

The team, which continues to be overseen by Andreas Kronthaler, Westwood’s widower and the designer of the mainline collection that shows in Paris, set out to show how age and time can enrich clothing.

There were curvy denim jackets and vests with frayed edges and tapestry linings; languid hemp-blend knits covered in faded vegetable dyes; jackets with built-in wrinkles on the pocket flaps and lapels, and saucy, off-the-shoulder dresses made from men’s shirt fabrics.

The team also looked back in time, and mined the vast Westwood archives. They came up with sparkly, knitted skirt combos with an old Hollywood — and disco — vibe, and cast bits of Boucher’s “Kiss of Hercules and Omphale,” onto diaphanous dresses and stretchy tops, all with the unmistakable Westwood stamp.

Launch Gallery: Vivienne Westwood RTW Spring 2024

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