Vivienne Westwood – The Red Queen

Pouring from speakers dotted about the place, it lead you around and pierced the consciousness as you absorbed the great works – both the paintings and the exclusive Rankin fashion portraits that accompanied them. The words of designers, models, All Walks members and even girl guides were matched with individual artworks, lending another dimension to the experience.

I stood before a painting of Elizabeth I, who looked regally out of the frame in her usual style and was dressed in a gown studded with enormous gem brooches. Beside the painting, in an easel, stood a huge Rankin photograph of a Vivienne Westwood creation, modelled by a mature All Walks model. Vivienne’s voice emanated from the amplifier beside it, discussing the historical sources that have inspired her.

“You can’t have any ideas unless you look back to the past,” she mused over the speaker. “There’s this idea people have that things are getting better. I don’t think they are.”

Vivienne’s work has always been inspired by history and historical artworks, and literature too. For a long time she has had links with London museum The Wallace Collection, whose rococo interiors she finds inspiring.

A few years ago I attended a reading there of “Active Resistance to Propaganda”, Vivienne’s ‘Manifesto’, which discusses the impact of art on society, among other things. It was an incredible day – an explosive collision of high fashion and art theory, and I couldn’t help but be transported back there as I gazed at the red-headed queen in the painting, and Vivienne’s gentle, growling voice washed over me.

The Manifesto takes the form of a play, to be read aloud, and many of the characters are taken from the story of Alice in Wonderland. In the lecture theatre at the Wallace Collection, Georgia Jagger had the part of Alice, and she was perfect for it– the epitome of the modern ingénue, lost in a wonderland of fashion and glamour. She stood at the front of the room, in a blue dress, shyly crumpled like a lovely paper doll. Her mother, Jerry Hall, sat in the audience, near the front. Georgia was staring nervously at a piece of paper she held in her hands – on it were her lines.

Vivienne stood beside her, wearing pair of her fabulous golden horns like a crown, and although her part was technically the narrator – “AR”, it was pretty hard not to imagine her as The Red Queen.

Most of the other readers were members of the public who had applied for the chance to read a part when booking their tickets. One man, sitting a few rows in front of me, had brought in and was wearing a home-made, oversized costume top hat, for his role: “Mad Hatter”. Some of the others had the odd bit of costume too. Many were of course wearing Vivienne Westwood, and Vivienne was not the only one sporting horns. It was rather like attending a real Mad Hatter’s tea party. I kept looking around for the dormouse.

It wasn’t a fashion show, and it wasn’t quite a debate either, but it was a deliciously intoxicating reminder that fashion is always biting at the heels of art, especially in Vivienne Westwood’s case.

One young audience member accused Vivienne of having a “narrow” attitude in her manifesto, because she excluded many modern artworks from her definition of ‘True Art’. Her response to this was direct and droll. “Oh yes,” she said, waving a hand imperiously, “I was your age once you know. And I was just the same. I was impressed by modern art. I sat in front of Rothko, having big thoughts,” she smiled. “But I grew up.”

Despite the few agitators in the crowd, the majority of Vivienne’s subjects were delighted, with the event, with themselves and most of all with the titian monarch herself. The discussion ran long, and Ros Saville, the Director of the museum came forward to round off proceedings. She thanked all involved and suggested that Vivienne might leave to see to her waiting press outside. Vivienne was clearly put out by the idea that press had anything to do with it. “I think,” she said, regally, “-that what is going on in here right now is much more important than that. Let them wait!”

I couldn’t help but chuckle a little. Long live Queen Viv. 

 

By Natalie Gowans