Vivienne Westwood Autumn-Winter ’22-23

‘Wild Beauty’

Autumn-Winter ’22

Priority has always been quality not quantity. Quality is in accord with Buy Less and supports the elimination of waste.

Wild Beauty is the title of the Gold Label Winter 2001 archive collection, and Wild Beauty is the feeling of this collection in the year of the Tiger.

For the Chinese, the tiger is an icon of strength, courage and exorcising evil. ‘Azure dragon in the east, white tiger in the west and in between an auspicious star guiding our affairs’. The tiger is a burning image, the tiger prowling the rainforest of Henri Rousseau in the National Gallery. The panther cutting technique – skirts and dresses – has the slow motion energy of the big cat. Chinese animal prints, spots and stripes.

Vivienne hand-painted eyes looking at Matisse paintings of beautiful women and her own eyes. The evil eye talisman, a symbol of protection.

We used Peter Bruegel’s painting ‘The Fight Between Carnival and Lent’, 1559, housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It’s the human condition, teeming with life, painted during the Little Ice Age around the time Henry VIII roasted game on the frozen Thames. According to the theory, people were eating mouldy corn which is the same fungus used in LSD. They became obsessed with hell and witches. The paintings are surreal but they penetrated the big picture.

Buy less, choose well, make it last.

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