In a now-infamous segment of car-crash TV from 1988, Vivienne Westwood is interviewed (and largely ridiculed) by Sue Lawley on BBC talk show Wogan. The studio audience, encouraged by the presenter, laughs mockingly throughout the clip, as several models, including the choreographer Michael Clark and Westwood muse Sara Stockbridge, appear wearing looks from the designer’s A/W 1988 collection, Time Machine. Peter Smithson, who was ten years old at the time, was completely enthralled. ‘I didn't realise who Vivienne Westwood was but I distinctly remember seeing the models and thinking they were absolutely fantastic,’ he says today. ‘I wanted to experience the joy and confidence that they had on their faces.’
Standing in the main exhibition space at the Bowes Museum in County Durham, where ‘Vivienne Westwood: Rebel – Storyteller – Visionary’ has just opened (until 6 September 2026), the science teacher-cum-associate curator, and Westwood super collector of 30 years, is surrounded by mannequins dressed in pieces from his vast personal archive (Manchester Art Gallery, Fashion Museum Bath and a few other private collectors have also loaned items, but Smithson’s collection is by far the most prominent).
‘Vivienne Westwood: Rebel – Storyteller – Visionary’ at The Bowes Museum
MacAndreas pink tartan mohair wraparound jacket with matching skirt, tie and college cap, and hals blouse ‘Anglomania’, A/W 1993/94,
Curated in collaboration with the museum’s Rachel Whitworth, the new retrospective features 40 full ensembles as well as framed individual garments, shoes, accessories, show invites and magazine covers, and spills into the museum’s Fashion and Textiles gallery where rolls of fabric, a sewing machine and calico toiles evoke a working atelier. In the main space, where Westwood designs from the mid-80s through to the 2000s are displayed chronologically, a series of paintings, sculptures, armour and other objects from the museum’s own mammoth collection are woven into the exhibition’s design, echoing the feel of a traditional salon.
‘The best bits from her seminal collections are where she's got that perfect blend of history, art and culture,’ continues Smithson, highlighting Westwood’s deep affection for the visual arts. ‘What she does is sew it together seamlessly with that golden thread of storytelling. And that's what I got interested in, unpicking that story.’ Indeed, the designer, who died aged 81 in 2022, was wildly passionate about 18th-century paintings in particular, championed the museum as a site of education, and famously described the Wallace Collection in London as ‘the greatest art school in the country’. Her own relationship with the Bowes Museum began in 2006, when she attended the opening of ‘Fine & Fashionable: Lace from the Blackbourne Collection’, having contributed three dresses to the show; the international touring exhibition, ‘Vivienne Westwood Shoes: An Exhibition 1973-2011’, followed in 2011.
Highlights of Vivienne Westwood: Rebel – Storyteller – Visionary at The Bowes Museum
While the new show is largely comprised of full looks, Smithson notes that each piece was sourced individually. His first formal purchase as a collector, after wearing the designer ‘to death’ in his early twenties, was a colourful crown with a faux ermine trim from the A/W 1987 collection, ‘Harris Tweed’ (Stockbridge wore a similar version on Wogan in 1988). ‘That is as Westwood as it comes,’ asserts Smithson. ‘With that collection, Westwood wanted to do sort of an affectionate parody of all things English and upper class; she produced it on two domestic sewing machines in a council flat. That one look contains five unmistakably iconic Westwood pieces: the crown, produced by Stephen Jones, the faux fur cape, her Stature of Liberty corset, a beehive crinoline. It's really significant.’
Elsewhere he points out a look from the ‘Portrait’ collection (A/W 1990), for which Westwood returned to the Wallace Collection. ‘Those pieces are absolutely timeless, but it's the level of thought that she puts into things. She wanted to represent every aspect of 18th-century painting, and so she introduced the large silk scarf, because when the models walked down the catwalk, the silk moved as if it was like the fluidity of paint,’ he says, reflecting on a ‘Shepherd’ print scarf featuring François Boucher’s Daphnis and Chloe (1743). Of a Boulle print moleskin dress, displayed with the scarf and three strings of pearls, he explains that ‘Westwood put the ink on the velvet dress thick and let it dry, so that when the velvet was stretched, the gold ink would crackle to represent the gilding on frames.
Faux leopard fur princess coat, principle boy shirt with frame detail, and fig leaf embellished tights, ‘Voyage to Cythera’, A/W 1988/89,
‘This is what became known in the very early 1990s as the principal boy look,’ Smithson continues, standing beside an outfit from ‘Voyage to Cythera’ (A/W 1989). The collection took its name from Jean-Antoine Watteau’s The Embarkation for Cythera, painted in 1717 and characterising the carefree new mood that arrived from the darkness of Louis XIV’s death in 1715; the look in question references the spirit of the scene, with the now iconic fig leaf tights, a ‘Princess’ faux leopard jacket and the ‘Principle Boy’ white shirt with framing detail. ‘It’s absolutely classic, a fun piece of Westwood design. I don't know if anybody else would think to get some flesh-coloured tights and put a mirrored Perspex fig leaf over it. But they're all pieces of art [the clothes in the show], and they’ve got stories to tell. I like to think they come alive at night and have a good party.’
Vivienne Westwood: Rebel – Storyteller – Visionary runs at The Bowes Museum, Durham until 6 September 2026.