Vivienne Westwood AW1992 "Swarm of Cherubs" Denim

Name: Vivienne Westwood AW1992 "Swarm of Cherubs" Denim
Brand: Vivienne Westwood
Price: 5000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Vivienne Westwood stands alone in the nexus between pop culture and fashion — her finest works rendered inextricable from the legendary punks which donned them. Initially drawn to the movement by its shock and subversion, her store King’s Road (later renamed SEX, and then Seditionaries) became the most crucial author of the movement’s visual language . Though as Westwood’s career has progressed, she has became more firmly entrenched in the mainstream, (receiving British Fashion Designer of the Year three times) she has remained a designer for whom the political and social message behind her clothing is often as important as the garments themselves, and has released capsule collections aimed at calling attention to nuclear weapons, climate change, and numerous other social causes. Ever wise to the pulse of the young generation, Vivienne drew inspiration in the late '80s and early ’90 from a niche of women she dubbed “Tatler girls,” (in reference to the popular UK magazine, Tatler) who borrowed in jest from the upper-class's style of dress. Keeping within this theme, she released a series of denim jackets and pants which featured elaborate, all-over prints utilizing fine art and other signifiers of elite financial status. These pants display work from artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard, a late-18th century painter typically associated with the Rococo movement. They depict details from his oil painting “The Swarm of Cupids” (c. 1765-1767). Condition: 9/10. No significant flaws. Tagged size: 34

Designer:

Vivienne Westwood

Brand:

Vivienne Westwood

Period:

1990-1999

Condition:

Seller Location:

Beverly Hills, CA

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU2049221408602

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Shop All Vivienne Westwood

Vivienne Westwood

For someone who regularly swatted away the industry that made her, audacious British fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood certainly knew her way around a garment. And she knew how to provoke. “I don’t follow fashion,” Westwood once told the New York Times. “I’ve never been interested in it.” Collectors are certainly interested in her work, and vintage Vivienne Westwood dresses, handbags, lingerie and jackets have become very desirable over the years.

Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in a village in Derbyshire, in central England, but moved to London as a teen. In the early 1960s, she began to make her own necklaces and other jewelry and met an artist, activist and entrepreneur named Malcolm McLaren. They became involved romantically and she made clothes for him in the style of the Teddy Boys — the city’s music-crazed, occasionally violent teenagers at the time who wore high-waisted trousers and tailored velvet blazers that drew on Edwardian-era fashions.

Westwood and McLaren opened a vintage shop on King’s Road in London in 1971. The flared denim and peasant blouses of the 1960s, then still popular with the “peace and love” set, didn’t hold any weight for Westwood. Instead, she was interested in provocative, edgy apparel. She repaired used clothing and endeavored to create bold new designs from scratch.

Together Westwood and McLaren sold older rock-and-roll records, customized T-shirts with antiestablishment slogans, biker jackets and snug trousers inspired by the Marlon Brando film The Wild One as well as bondage fetish wear. The shop, once called Let It Rock and then Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die before Sex became a more appropriate moniker, evolved into a youth mecca. The DIY garments — zippered tops, burnt tees emblazoned with anarchist messages — flew off the shelves. More notably, it brought punk to the masses.

Westwood was soon dressing the Sex Pistols, a band that McLaren managed, all the while bridging the gap between music and fashion in a manner that has reverberated throughout the industry for decades.

In 1981, the couple’s first fashion show marked the debut of their Pirate collection — a swashbuckler-themed line that sprang from Westwood’s research into Indigenous Americans and the “power garments” of the Louis XIV era. The collection’s ample proportions and cutting-edge tailoring countered punk’s geometry and tight latex fits as well as what rocker Adam Ant called the “Puritanism” that plagued England at the time. The Pirate collection’s enduring influence on the world of fashion as well as the theatrical work of designers such as John Galliano and Alexander McQueen is undeniable.

For the colorful corsets of her 1990 Portrait collection, Westwood drew on 18th-century oil paintings — her models donned the pearl necklaces that have become a social media star and a favorite of influencers and fashion lovers all over the world. For a jacket-and-shorts suit from her Fall/Winter 1996–97 Storm in a Teacup line, the designer used the extreme asymmetry of a tartan mash-up to confront, according to Westwood, “the horror of uniformity and minimalism.”

The self-taught Westwood enjoyed a rapid ascent in fashion, with British society embracing her looks and Vogue immortalizing them in its glossy pages. She garnered accolades for introducing corsets to the runway and dressed Kate Moss and Helena Bonham Carter. And an original Vivienne Westwood wedding dress is featured in 2008’s Sex and the City film.

The fires of political and environmental activism burned brightly for Westwood: She was a Greenpeace ambassador, having designed the organization’s official “Save the Arctic” logo; her clothing brand is committed to using recycled canvas and other eco-friendly materials in the production process; and in 2020, she protested the extradition of Julian Assange by suspending herself in a bird cage outside London’s Old Bailey court. But she will always be the grande dame of British design.

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