Christie’s, a posh auction house, is currently filled with expletives and high fashion as it showcases an exhibition of clothes designed by the late Vivienne Westwood.
The exhibition is a public show of the clothes that will soon be sold to raise money for the many charities that she supported in life. It also allows people with eyes considerably larger than their wallets to see the clothes in person.
It’s very much a showroom of clothing with a mix of clothes on mannequins and others hung up as if for sale in a shop. A nice touch, I thought, is that the mannequins are mostly freestanding so that you can see the back of the dresses as well as the front. Until you see the backs, it’s easy to forget that quite often people approach you from behind when at a party, so makes sense for the back of the dress to be as interesting as the front.
Although Vivienne Westwood was a huge figure in life and achieved much away from fashion, the dusplay doesn’t really tell her story—it’s a display of the frocks that will be sold to deep-pocketed collectors.
In that, it’s not a conventional museum exhibition that tells a story, but very much a chance to gawp at her prodigious and wide-ranging designs. I suspect a lot of people who simply know her for the punk styles that garnered the headlines might be surprised to see just how elegant most of the collection on display is.
Apart from the colours and fabrics, what stood out was the cut of the jackets and how sculpted they are. Away from the clothing, there’s also a room given over to her large playing cards project, which is essentially pure art rather than fashion.
The Vivienne Westwood exhibition is at Christie’s in central London until Monday 24th June, and is open daily, usually from 11am to 5pm.
The exhibition is free to visit, and photography is allowed.
There is also a late opening on Thursday 20th June from 6pm to 9pm, which needs booking in advance from here.
