Vivienne Westwood, 35 Years in Fashion

Then you walk on a tightrope, carefully and regally to keep from falling. ‘Fashion for me is like walking a tightrope. You risk falling off into the ridiculous, but if you can stay on that tightrope, you can achieve a triumph’.

“Vivienne Westwood” was exhibited at Victoria & Albert Museum in London in spring 2004. The beloved exhibition was extended still after the spring was over, standing as hommage to the sublime beauty of London’s punk spirit and its solid morale, becoming a ceremonial event to carry on the essence of punk discipline into 21st century. Vivienne’s portrait on the sky-blue posters refreshingly decorated the whole city over six months.

The exhibition space was chronologically divided into two categories: “The Early Years” that represented her strong slogans in a bright room, and “Maturity” that showed dresses from later years under sensual lighting. The not-so-big exhibition space was filled up with enough amount of dresses and words to introduce Vivienne Westwood herself and the comrades of the time, her surroundings that she has also created along time, and the resource of her imagination. You could easily imagine she has been loved, understood and supported. While gorgeous parties caught people’s mind with thrilling experiences, more workshops and lectures were organised by the museum that embraces frequent visitors, to back-up the country’s cultural education. The workshops showed the process of garment-making and playfully created dresses out of paper.

The subversive mind and courageous attitude unique to adolescent years, that had been repeated, kept in strength, beat the street and the time till they turned into the firm notions of beauty of the country to enrich its profound culture. Vivienne has become over 60 meanwhile, still biking around in South London with her dog in a basket.
‘I always try to go a different way home. It’s a kind of curiosity, not to want to do the same thing’, she says, and it evokes your curiosity. Culture goes around to come around your everyday life; equivalent to the fact that your young curiosity holds the hidden potential to reach one country’s culture after all.

The Vivienne’s portrait in Tokyo on posters looks a little bit different when the strong context of the authentic street culture and the richest museum of art and design in the world has slipped out. Instead of finding a different path, you are asked to go straight to the 52nd floor by the high-speed lift, having a little patience with the squeaking noise in the ear. The 52nd floor is a bit too far from the street, and the view too fine to sniff the true culture. Still, however, Vivienne’s bright orange hair is likewise in the clear winter sky of Tokyo, and her dresses and attitude are as much refreshing to grab your mind lightly.

This link to the V&A website should complement the Tokyo version of “Vivienne Westwood”.