This spring, The Bowes Museum, home to one of the country’s most significant fashion collections, will host a major retrospective dedicated to Vivienne Westwood (1941–2022). Focusing on Westwood’s iconic designs from the early 1980s to the 2000s, Vivienne Westwood: Rebel – Storyteller – Visionary celebrates the legacy of Britain’s most provocative and imaginative designer, whose influence continues to shape global fashion. More than 40 ensembles, along with individual garments, accessories, jewellery, and ephemera from the collection of Peter Smithson, will be joined by never-before-seen garments from private collections, as well as loans from Manchester Art Gallery and Fashion Museum Bath.

The exhibition in the Fashion and Textiles gallery is arranged to evoke a working atelier, complete with rolls of fabric, sewing machine, pin cushions and tailoring shears. Calico toiles and garments digitally deconstructed by the Fashion Department at Northumbria University reveal Westwood’s construction techniques, from bias cutting and pleating to screen printing and distressed fabrics. The reimagined atelier will showcase the craft behind Westwood’s rule-breaking design.

In the main exhibition space, innovative curatorial design, inspired by traditional salon hangs, will see walls adorned with corsets and T-shirts, alongside panelling, paintings and mirrors from The Bowes Museum’s Collection. Westwood’s designs will be laid out chronologically from the mid-1980s to the protest T-shirts from the early 2000’s.

The exhibition will chronicle how the Vivienne Westwood label evolved over time, framing its history through the Worlds End years, the Westwood years and the Kronthaler years. Key milestones include the introduction of the orb synonymous with the brand, winning British fashion designer of the year in 1990 and 1991, Westwood’s marriage to Andreas Kronthaler (b. 1966) and the restructure of the company into Gold and Red labels, marking a different approach to design and manufacture.

Westwood was a dedicated researcher of historical dress and visited The Bowes Museum in 2006. Reflecting this connection, the exhibition will juxtapose over 80 historic objects from the museum’s own collection with her designs, emphasising shared themes and artistic references. Dramatic gilded mirror frames from the museum’s collection echo the theatrical picture frame from which models emerged in Westwood’s Voyage to Cythera (A/W 1989/90) catwalk show, while works from the Portrait (A/W 1990/91) show, which drew inspiration from eighteenth-century art, will be presented alongside Pierre Jacques Cazes’s (1676–1754) La naissance de Vénus – The triumph of Venus, featuring putti imagery echoed in Westwood’s designs.