Vivienne
Westwood 05/04 The Victoria & Albert Museum, on April 30th, played host to one of the most successful British fashion designers of all time, Vivienne Westwood. The iconic Westwood has been an influence to everyone from Jean-Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen & Tom Ford over the last three decades. Set against the magnificent backdrop of the Raphael Gallery, not too scantily clad models waltzed down the catwalk dressed in Westwood's designs. The designs on show were from Westwood's recent Autumn Winter collections, the Gold label and Man collections, shown in Paris and Milan last March and January respectively. The Gold label exhibition collection draws its inspiration from Westwood's earlier collections with references to bondage and tartan. There was plenty of evening and day wear, knitwear, sequins, glitter, buffalo hats, coin and pound note jewellery on show too. The crumpled silk taffeta evening dresses based on eighteenth century artist Francois Boucher's portraits of Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour was a great hit with the crowd, along with the tight-sequinned silver hot pants, modelled seductively. A mention also has to be given to Westwood's stunning shoes accompanying the designs. Surprisingly there were no catwalk casualties today. Famously supermodel Naomi Campbell fell over wearing Westwood's 10-inch electric-blue mock-croc platform shoes in her 1993 Paris catwalk show. The
Vivienne Westwood exhibition runs until July 11 2004 and is the largest
exhibit the V&A has devoted to a single British designer... Don’t
miss it! |