Bust, Boucher and Black Monday: Vivienne Westwood’s reverse bodice

“A few years ago, I wanted to make a collection. I would try to combine a series of fabrics. The range of these fabrics is very rich, comparable to all the different qualities and rich textures seen in oil paintings. From linen to lace; twill .

“When I arranged these fabrics, I still lacked something: somehow, the paintings themselves. I drew a painter’s canvas; then I knew I had to have a picture of the painting. I chose the most decorative painter. – Boucher – And Wallace’s most typical Boucher painting is for me the shepherd she looks at sleeping. I just like the ribbon on the neck of the sheep… I hope she looks It seems that I just got out of a painting.

“I call this series the ‘Portrait’ series.” – Vivienne Westwood, 1996

Sometimes fashion is attractive because it’s a mirror of time; sometimes it’s because it’s a wide window, a painted ceiling, and a great escape. After the Black Monday and the 1987 financial crisis, Vivienne Westwood released a series inspired by Baroque art, with a theme of ancient Greek and Roman themes, full of sensuality. When other designers leave, in the birth of a method called minimalism, or cause both trouble and deliberate wear and tear, this is called the first deconstruction, and later, garbage, flushing the collected colors and irrelevant details, Wei Sterwood pushed the opposite direction. She continues to condemn orthodoxy as the “grave of wisdom” (citing Bertrand Russell) and equally against convention.

In March 1990, under the gilded ceilings of the Board of Directors and the chandeliers of the Regency, and under the gloom of the ongoing global recession, Westwood launched a series called Portrait. Inspired by the grandeur of the 18th century oil paintings, it is displayed in a room surrounded by the best examples of Crown Estate. In the face of a collapsed market and squeaky credit, its luxury is almost ridiculous and almost obscene. It caused a sensation.

The centerpiece of this bodice, photographed by Rococo painter François Boucher (1703-1770), has become a model of high Westwood style. It appears in subsequent collections, or sometimes in works by different artists (a baby from Franz Hals; a group of Fragonard cherubs; a Nicholas Hilliard from Elizabeth I), a gold-plated frame across the shoulder like a literal tear The cracked masterpiece breaks down through the body. The first example comes from the Wallace Collection, a national treasure and a source of inspiration for Westwood throughout his career. A series of paintings and decorative arts in San Francisco, France, were assembled in the 19th century, many of which were purchased at the biens nationaux – revolutionizing the sale of confiscated aristocratic goods – the Wallace collection in Manchester Square, in the former townhouse . Seymour family, Maxius of Hertford. (The collection was accumulating by the first four Marquesses and the fourth Marquis son, Sir Richard Wallace.) In addition to the brackets of the Sèvres porcelain and the brass and enamel furniture designed by Louis XIV furniture manufacturer André-Charles Boulle, Rice also includes no less than 19 pieces of Boucher’s work. This is Daphnis and Chloe–also known as the shepherd shepherd watching sleeping, or not so obvious as Wallace’s stock number P385 – painted at 1743-5. For Westwood, this is a stereotype of Boucher, a study of shiny, satin fleshy and swagged fabrics as well as man-made country porn. Boucher was a favorite painter of Mrs. Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV.

Westwood also decorated the corset in this collection, along with Boulle’s inlay ormolu and the prance of the mythical beast, pulled out from the opposite side of the toilet mirror made for Dupese de Berry in 1713, he was Philippe duc d ‘Orléans’ daughter and executed colored velvet with gold foil prints. But whether the variant of the Boucher pattern captures the imagination of the public, perhaps because of its openness and impeccable flesh.