It’s kind of easy to step into the world of high-end clothes and accessories. It’s not as easy, however, to enter the world of true luxury and true sophistication, where style meets something far beyond the label. Craftsmanship, ideas brought to life by skilled hands, unusual choices capable of writing new rules. This is what we’ve found in Vivienne Westwood’s new designer bag collection.
Accessories that have the power to transform not just an outfit but the entire world around them. It may sound like an exaggeration, but after meeting these bags, we’re sure many will share our opinion. Bags for sure, but with vision.
A new line that clearly draws on the great tradition of Vivienne Westwood, the designer who became a fashion house and who has never been afraid to surprise. A sense of surprise born of a strong, powerful voice, not the noise that so often fills so much of fashion today.
Strong, powerful, yet without noise
Silence can be more eloquent than a thousand shouted words. It’s about deciding, first of all, which battles are worth fighting. Letting shapes speak, letting looks register, letting details take the lead. It’s not easy, which is why so few venture into lands unexplored by all except Vivienne Westwood. The new collection, in a sense, follows exactly this logic. No rush for special effects, no shouting to be seen, but deliberate choices that assert who we have always been.
The echo of Vivienne Westwood’s tradition is clear. An aristocracy that, just like true aristocracy, can afford to play by its own rules, accountable to no one, and for that reason incredibly fascinating.
There is sharp humour, there are references to the past that feel like tradition rather than old-fashioned clutter, and there is a new way of interpreting certain cuts, certain fabrics, certain techniques.
For real fashion lovers (and lovers of its history), the references will be obvious. But they do not play the role of lifeless paintings in a museum. They are a vocabulary of ideas, eternal enough to accompany us in the present and, above all, into the future.
From the stage to everyday life
If there is one wall Vivienne Westwood has unquestionably managed to tear down, it is the one separating the catwalk from everyday life. Originality has always been one of the defining traits of her collections, but never trapped inside what can feel like a prison, a fashion zoo, if you like. Runways that everyone forgets before the show has even ended and the audience has gone home.
There is no need for that: this collection of Vivienne Westwood bags shows, as so many others that have marked her career and the history of the House, that fashion finds its highest expression wherever you choose to take it.
Out in the street for a walk, on a frenetic shopping day, for an aperitif or even a gala dinner. At the centre there will always be the Vivienne bag. With its orb, its tartans, its glossy leathers.