Vivienne on her Westwood Manifesto

If the matte-faced fashionistas queuing up at west London’s Tabernacle on Sunday came expecting a catwalk show by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood they would have been sorely disappointed.

Instead they were treated to London kids, a  Benetton poster collection of attractive youngsters, reading aloud on stage from Westwood’s manifesto ‘Active Resistance to Propaganda’ or ‘AR’ for short.

This was a sell-out event set up by The Last Tuesday Society  who are ‘devoted to exploring and furthering the esoteric, literary and artistic aspects of life in London and beyond’.

Vivienne herself was interestingly dressed; a deconstructed jogging suit in cotton flannel with a Halloween silhouette print, a sweatband printed ‘BRANDED’ and pointy strappy shoes. The kids wore simple black T-shirts with the names of their roles printed on…’Alice’, ‘Pinocchio’, ‘Diogenes’ and  ‘I heart crap’.

The play was difficult to follow; I wondered how much the kids themselves understood. The ideas in her manifesto were perhaps too complex for this kind of staging. The evening really came alive when Westwood, who has long been interested in politics and philosophy, spoke off the cuff in her strong northern tones: ‘I never wanted to be a fashion designer. I hated it for 15 years, but it has given me a voice.’

I remember being astounded by Vivienne Westwood’s choice of all seven volumes of Proust as her holiday paperbacks on Desert Island Discs.

Westwood expressed frustration with the contemporary art and fashion scenes: ‘Nothing is happening. It’s all self-promotion.’

The audience laughed when she described going to an exhibition by an old boyfriend, who hadn’t made the work, brass sculptures, himself: ‘Fashion and art is ephemeral but to be timeless you have to be true and pure. Che Guevara is the only rebel. Kids are still wearing his image.’

You could say the same about Dame Vivienne Westwood; she is a national treasure, an original who still dares, despite her acceptance into the establishment, to challenge complacent thinking. Having been at the forefront of punk in the ’70s, selling designs at her shop Sex in the Kings Road, her influence is still felt today, from every do-it-yourself street designer running up a piece of tailoring on their sewing machines to the new movement for underground restaurants.

She continues to shock: recently she announced she’d crossed the floor, from a lifetime of support for the Labour party,  to Conservative.

Tabernacle Arts Centre
Powis Square
Notting Hill
W11 2AY

Image courtesy of Sienna Rodgers