Vivienne Westwood: f/w 2022
Featured Image: Jo Fetto for Vivienne Westwood
LONDON – Vivienne Westwood has, for a long time, promoted political causes such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, climate change, and civil rights groups. Her brand’s manifesto has been “Buy less, choose well, make it last.”
Recently, key luxury brands have pledged to focus on sustainability. When she first launched her brand in the 70s, her approach was to produce less, reuse materials, and limit her contribution to fast fashion and a constant rotation of trends. The Fall/Winter 2022 season emphasized sustainability and recycling. They successfully did this by using lower environmental impact and cruelty-free materials.
The team looked back to Wild Beauty! Of the fall 2001 show, in which tiger headpieces, overdyed deadstock cotton velvet and not-harmful viscose dresses. The collection, inspired by Chinese New Year, aims to bestow good luck, wealth, and health all year long.
Fall 2022 had lower-impact and cruelty-free materials that amounted to 71% of the show. Fabric combinations include organic cotton, recycled nylon polyester and nylon, and responsibly sourced viscose.
She looked at Matisse’s work, hand-painted onto white denim jackets, jeans, and sneakers. Models wore tartan pants and suit jackets with shrunken blazers and ties. The classic Vivienne Westwood pearl necklaces became chunkier and the corsets slimmed down.
Pieter Bruegel’s 1550 painting The Fight Between Carnival and Lent featured different jackets and coats. Additionally, the show notes refer to Westwood’s attraction to the painting: “According to the theory, people were eating moldy corn which is the same fungus used in LSD. They became obsessed with hell and witches.”
The collection was aesthetically pleasing and focused on an increasingly relevant issue of the fashion industry’s environmental impacts and destruction.