{"id":8593,"date":"2024-06-28T08:44:44","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T08:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/?p=8593"},"modified":"2024-06-28T08:44:44","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T08:44:44","slug":"the-wonder-of-westwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/the-wonder-of-westwood\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wonder of Westwood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi again<\/p>\n

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That’s the wonder of Vivienne Westwood. Last week I went up to London and met with Gail of Is This Mutton i<\/a>n Victoria Station, whereupon off we went to Christie’s on a number 38 bus. And wow, both of us were absolutely knocked out by what we saw. It was Christies’s pre-auction reveal of Vivienne Westwood clothes.<\/p>\n

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I’m sure you all know of Vivienne Westwood who was a one-off. She was such a fascinating combination of visionary fashion designer, environmentalist and gloriously out-there punk. Wikipedia informs me that she is ranked as the 4th most influential British artist of the last 50 years.<\/p>\n

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Can I emphasise that this exhibition was not about Westwood’s fashion designs and the clothes she sold, no, these were her actual own clothes. Gail told me Westwood felt these clothes should not be sold as an entire collection to a museum, but be worn by members of the public as there was still plenty of wear in them. Proceeds of the sale were to go to several charities including Greenpeace. My word, what a woman – respect!<\/p>\n

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To say we were delighted with the exhibition was an understatement as it truly exceeded our expectations. There were 5 rooms of amazing clothes – and here are a few photos to show you her mastery of design and well, simply, her pizzazz, and her exciting energy and style. Sadly, we saw the exhibition in its last few days so it is closed now.<\/p>\n

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Here is Gail at the beginning of the exhibition. She wore a perfect dress for her gamine figure.<\/p>\n

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And how about that for a nipped in waist and shoulder pads?<\/p>\n

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That was an interesting take on the trouser suit.<\/p>\n

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More jackets – I really fancy the one on the right.<\/p>\n

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The photo doesn’t do this justice as the dress sparkled all over with different coloured stones.<\/p>\n

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Btw, this dress above was reserved at \u00a35000 and bids were expected to reach \u00a310,000. \u00a0Actually there was nothing under \u00a31000 apart from some shoes and some jewellery.<\/p>\n

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We were surprised, her waist was tiny! \u00a0Because Westwood had such a strong presence and personality I had thought of her as tall and imposing but no she was much smaller than I thought – and that waist….<\/p>\n

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What about this one below – anyone got a waist this small? However, she did wear corsets and worked on her look of a clinched in waist.<\/p>\n

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Some of the clothes had wine stains and other marks – but I think this must be deliberate.<\/p>\n

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She did love a suit!<\/p>\n

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Matching shoes anyone? \u00a0Are you tempted?<\/p>\n

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I was wearing my black skirt, which I featured in the last post, and a denim white jacket over a white t-shirt. On reflection, I could have worn a more structured jacket. See below for more musings on the thoughts I had after seeing these clothes.<\/p>\n

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I was pointing at the only garment in the exhibition that would fit me as it had a Westwood label and is a UK Size 12, most of the items were far smaller than a size 12.<\/p>\n

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Although Westwood wanted these clothes to be worn, I imagine there will be many wealthy collectors, and even museums, after these wonderful items. Sigh, there were several I quite fancied, and I especially loved the jewellery (sorry didn’t take any photos) but see the next couple of paragraph.<\/p>\n

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I was so inspired by the exhibition, especially the nipped-in waists, that the very next day I looked at my wardrobe and said to myself – boring, boring, boring! Several dresses went into the charity shop bag and that afternoon I sourced a nipped-in black cotton jacket from my local Dress Agency and bought it without a thought. Also bought a lovely leopard duster coat that I will show you soon. It’s too warm for our current weather, but I will wear the jacket and have done already.<\/p>\n

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The whole point of this blog is to encourage women of any age, but especially those who, like me, are well into the \u00a070s to wear what we damn well like (pardon my language). But I feel strongly that there is a lot of pressure on women to fade away quietly or comfortably and just stay there. Also we can all get into a rut or just be happy with what we think is best. I know I often get into a rut. But Westwood, whose face looked out on us in several large photographs, (didn’t take pics of them, unfortunately) was never afraid to i) look old – I mean she showed off her wrinkles and jowls and quite obviously hadn’t had any ‘work’ done.<\/p>\n

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London, UK. 4th June 2016. EDITORIAL – Bursary Or Bust rally.Dame Vivienne Westwood, speaks outside the Department of Health building, Whitehall, in protest of government plans to axe the NHS Bursary. Copyright Shutterstock<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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And ii) she was never afraid to be outrageous and have a fun look.<\/p>\n

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Oh Yes, Yes, and Yes again. \u00a0I want to have that fun look, even an outrageous look, certainly an edgy look. And also I really was so heartened by Westwood’s face. She was so unafraid of looking the way she did.<\/p>\n

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Waterloo Place, London, UK. 6th February 2016. EDITORIAL – Dame Vivienne Westwood, British fashion designer, speaks out at a rally, in support of the junior doctor’s “Masked March” protest in London. Copyright Shutterstock<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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What an inspirational fun exhibition it was.<\/p>\n

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That’s all for now, but tell me, do you want to be just comfortable in your clothes or could you possibly take on being a little bit outrageous! Well, this week I went up to London on the hottest day of our little heatwave and I did indeed choose to be comfortable in un-air-conditioned London – those buses! \u00a0I wore one of the long flowery skirts I showed you recently with a white loose cotton blouse (you’ll see those pics soon). The thing is I aspire to be outrageous and often fail.<\/p>\n

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But it’s not a bad attitude to take. \u00a0Let me know what you think!<\/p>\n

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With love, Penny, the Frugalfashionshopper<\/em><\/p>\n

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Hi again   That’s the wonder of Vivienne Westwood. Last week I went up to London and met with Gail of Is This Mutton in Victoria Station, whereupon off we went to Christie’s on a number 38 bus. And wow,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[133],"tags":[37,49,67,70,75,93],"class_list":["post-8593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-attitudes-age","tag-attitudes-and-age","tag-charity-shop","tag-exhibition","tag-fashion","tag-frugal-fashion-shopper","tag-older-women"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8593"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8619,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8593\/revisions\/8619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frugalfashionshopper.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}