Vivienne Westwood offered a passionate, ready-for-combat statement on unisex dressing by reversing the gender roles for her fall collection. She power-dressed the women in her dynamic lineup in boxy suits and squeezed her male cast into tunics and dresses.
The tailoring was strong. Elongated silhouettes and extra-broad shoulders on top looked fresh and fierce paired with cropped, big-cuffed pants. Elsewhere, the bulky jackets served as a fun companion for “bisexual” — as Westwood called them — Hawaiian hula skirts. “I love the change in proportion. It’s all so sexual because we’re looking at people with new eyes,” she said in her show notes, a manifesto for fairness, humanity and the ailing environment.
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Another highlight was the collection’s heavy, textured knits — part coats, part cardigans — made from “bio-friendly” sheep’s wool stitched with patches of crochet, which looked as if the model had skinned a wild animal and wrapped its pelt around her body as a trophy.
Westwood showed colorful, draped dresses, too, which caught the eye of actress Naomie Harris. “I wish [my character] Moneypenny could wear something like this to the office and in the field. I think it would be kind of badass, right?” she mused as she enjoyed a short break from the set of the new James Bond film, “Spectre.” The designer also got powerful backup from “Game of Thrones” warrior Brienne of Tarth a.k.a. Gwendoline Christie, who stomped fearlessly down the tinsel-clad runway to the hard-core live sounds of German punk-rock band Die Hartjungs.