Dresses, suits, shoes and jewellery from the personal collection of late British designer Vivienne Westwood will go under the hammer this month is an auction aimed at raising funds for charity.
More than 200 lots are being offered by Christie’s in London for the two-part “Vivienne Westwood: The Personal Collection” auction, made up of a live sale on June 25 and an online auction running June 14-28.
Westwood, one of British fashion’s biggest names, died in December 2022, aged 81. Her longtime collaborator and widower Andreas Kronthaler has selected looks spanning four decades for the auction, with the earliest dating from Westwood’s Autumn-Winter 1983-1984 collection.
“These are the things that she chose to wear herself throughout the last 40 years of her life,” Adrian Hume-Sayer, head of sale for the auction, told Reuters at a press preview on Thursday (June 13).
“It’s very personal… These are the things you can see her on her bike, riding around London, press interviews, end of the catwalk… just conducting her day-to-day life. But she also lived… as she spoke. And so unlike many people… in her position, she wore things repeatedly. She had favourites. There are things here you can see where she’s darned and that, in a normal sale, that would be a sort of negative. But here, it’s amazing because… you can see that those stitches are from the hand of Vivienne Westwood.”
Westwood, whose name was synonymous with 1970s punk rebellion, was known for her activism. Her T-shirts bore slogans against climate change, pollution as well as her support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
In 2017, she designed a pack of playing cards as ‘A Strategy 2 Save the World’, with the prints focusing on issues such as climate change and inequality. A set of 10 enlarged prints are being offered with an estimate of 30,000 – 50,000 pounds ($38,292 – $63,820).
“So the proceeds from the sale, the vendors are donating, they’re all going to charity. That was the intention from the very beginning, and they’ll be split,” Hume-Sayer said.
“The prints will be sold for the benefit of Greenpeace by the Vivienne Foundation, Vivienne’s own foundation. And then the proceeds of the wardrobe, the rest of the auction, it’s going to be split three ways between the Vivienne Foundation, Amnesty International and Medecins Sans Frontieres.”
A selection of the lots will be on public display at Christie’s London from Friday (June 14) until June 24.
SOURCE: REUTERS