Who hasn’t seen Naomi Campbell’s famous runway fall?
That was on Vivienne Westwood’s runway in Paris back in 1993. Today in London it happened again, albeit to a very different model. One of the acrobats that Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler recruited for this highly entertaining show had just finished a mighty Cossack squat when his 8-inch-ish platform slipped out from under him. He crashed to the floor, crushed the full-hemmed skirt of his off-the-shoulder black taffeta gown . . . but sprung back up onto his platforms undaunted. We applauded in relief.
And that was only the second most heart-in-mouth moment of this show. The tensest was at the finale, when Westwood came out held aloft above a mightily muscled man. It did not look entirely rehearsed. He was strong, but was she stable? One slip, and calamity. There was a millisecond where it looked like she might take out the editor of British GQ in a moment of double fashion tragedy. Happily, they made the course, and her giddily motley cast rushed out behind as we applauded once again.
There were many takeaways from a show that is well worth watching in full. It was driven by Westwood’s continuing activism to highlight and decry climate change. As her husband said backstage: “She is on a mission. It is all her philosophy. She is unstoppable, a tyrant! A righteous tyrant.” Thus many of the opening looks were emblazoned with Westwood’s implorings. The fishnet stockings worn by both men and women were stuffed with an ephemera of trash: cans, packets, and a few crushed plastic balls pinched from the children’s adventure playground at the end of the runway. Some of the models were shod in crushed Evian bottles strapped roughly to their feet. Prints included one taken from Bruegel and another taken from Westwood’s own illustrations for a new deck of playing cards in which the club was distorted to resemble a phallus. Some fine suiting cut in hemp was similarly accessorized by a diamond-studded chain. Dresses and pants were patched with off cuts of fabric and sequin.
In an excellent makeup hack, lipstick was replaced with rose petal. In the background, the music was provided by Levant and Taylor with Mic Righteous, one of whose rhymes went: “I hear the fire talking / the young people are wonderful / and the future is with Corbyn.” The problem so many young designers who owe so much to Westwood face is that nobody does what she does better than her. And that includes runway tumbles.
