Inside the magnificent Vivienne Westwood jewellery exhibit
Friday, 17 January 2025
“It was always important, jewellery, for Vivienne ‒ since the very beginning.”
These are the words of Alex Krenn, the late legend’s friend, and the specials and accessories designer for the Vivienne Westwood fashion house based in London. He spoke to The Post at Te Papa in Wellington on Thursday, at a sneak preview of its ticketed Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery exhibit that opens its doors to the public on Friday.
The major retrospective is a world debut, curated by the fashion house and produced by Nomad Exhibitions, and features more than 550 pieces of spectacular jewellery and 15 ensembles spanning four decades of the career of the pioneering British fashion designer, who died in 2022.
At the national museum rooms of glass cabinets are stuffed with bedazzled crowns; sparkling tiaras; chain link collars; fluffy charm bracelets; overrsized earrings with erotica; Elizabethan-esque lace-up clompers; headbands with Satyr horns or cutesy hearts; safety pin and paper clip earrings; necklaces of skeletons, skulls and bones; gaudy knuckle dusters; and of course, her iconic Lakshmi orb that references celestial power, the occult and the divine.
But the exhibit is more than just a feast for the eye ‒ it’s an intimate look into the evolving mind of the woman credited with bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream with her provocative, imaginative and nonconformist designs. Her diverse and highly referential jewellery archive is as much an art historian’s dream as it is a political scientist’s or an activist’s.
Krenn, in an interview, said for each runway collection and for particular garments and events, special jewellery was made by Westwood. “It made the whole look,” he said. “This is a celebration of decades of work.”
The house thought to compile an exhibit many years ago but it was not until Te Papa, with its deep connection to the world, expressed strong interest that a plan started to fall into place. Krenn said that like the museum, Westwood too was committed to the planet, something evident in a series of clips of the designer talking about issues like climate change that provide context for the show. “Politicians are criminals,” Westwood says in one projected video, citing their complicity in environmental degradation.
Says Krenn: “She was committed to the world and to make it a better place.”
Seeing such an extensive array of her work and art in one place was a slightly emotional affair for the United Kingdom-based Krenn, who was born in Austria and is in New Zealand’s capital till later this month. He said he would never forget the exhibit’s significant early-morning blessing led by the museum and mana whenua: “She would have been here. She was here ‒ but if she would have been physically here ‒ she would have understood this so much, she would have valued it so much.”
Laurent Rivaud, the head of jewellery at Vivienne Westwood, who’s been with the house for four decades, had a large hand in selecting which items should be displayed and in which exact groupings.
The entry room features garments including an especially stunning brown satin corset dress, and the following areas are separated into themes of origins, parures, wonderland, exploration, orbs, do it yourself and miscellany. The categories follow through-lines more than timelines.
“I remember them, then suddenly, they disappear. They end up in the archive,” Krenn says of the individual artefacts. “Now they’re out. The dust was blown away, they’ve been put together. It’s time travel. … It’s an amazing chance to see everything together. Even for me, there’s a lot to discover.”
Also on offer for visitors is an opportunity to watch an interview with Westwood in which she details her creative inspiration, and a rich programme of events running in conjunction with the exhibit spanning jewellery, fashion, feminism, sustainability and music.
“Whatever we’ve been engaged with, she always did it 100%,” Krenn said. “The jewellery changed, of course, but according to whatever was needed for a particular collection.”
So how has the house continued to design without Westwood herself?
“It’s very easy to answer,” Krenn said. “We worked so close together, the whole team, the whole house, and we got so much from her. She was never following one thing. She adapted, she changed, she discovered something else, she revised something. So she was always in movement. And we have enough to go on with. … For me, she was always an example of being in the here and now.”
Westwood’s openness, fluidity and nature of not standing still was something to be admired, he added.
“She would always say, ‘choose well’, and ‘you don’t need so many things’. If you choose well, you have it forever. … I remember her as a person; as a friend; as the wife of my friend [Andreas Kronthaler]; someone who people called the boss. She was a presence.”
Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery runs to April 25. Tickets: tepapa.govt.nz