The Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood SS27 show landed in Paris inside the Palais de la Femme, a historic social residence managed by the Salvation Army that provides housing and support for vulnerable women and children and is currently celebrating its 100th year. Art Deco tiles, flooding light, and a crown that spelled out ‘chaos’ set the tone.
Natasha Lyonne walked the show in an oversize leopard-and-floral-print chore coat and bejewelled platform gladiator sandals. Bow-shaped mini gowns, earthy knits, the brand’s signature checkered prints, big sculpted sleeves, Renaissance-esque skirts, asymmetrical draped gowns, and corset shapes filled out the rest of the lineup. Farida Khelfa, described by the brand as an iconic 1980s French-Algerian muse, opened the show, while punk poet Stuart McKenzie provided the soundtrack.
Andreas Kronthaler on the Summer That Shaped the Collection
Backstage after the show, Kronthaler was direct about where his head had been. ‘My biggest point of reference was this summer,’ he told ELLE. ‘I really, really tried to keep up with it and imagine the next one, because I think we will kind of probably remember this one as the one which was still okay.’
Heat, it seems, did most of the design thinking. ‘Clothes, I just didn’t wear any. I wore a nightshirt. I kept on wearing it all day long, and I went everywhere. And we really liked it, and I felt comfortable and happy. I just wanted everything to be as light as possible.’ The impulse towards lightness ran through the whole collection: loose shapes, airy silhouettes, nothing that clings.
Among those who turned out for the occasion, according to WWD, were Jaden Smith, Heidi Klum, and Klum’s daughter Lou Sulola Samuel. Not a bad crowd for a space that doubles as a shelter. The Palais de la Femme has that effect: grounding, a little unexpected, and a long way from the usual fashion week venue.
Cheat Jackets, Bazan Fabric, and the Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood Aesthetic
The historical research went deeper than the venue. Following the legacy of Westwood herself as a fashion history lover and activist, Kronthaler merged the late-17th-century ‘cheat jacket’, where expensive fabric sits at the front and scraps fill the back, with his love of Bazan fabric, a West African textile made from hand-dyed cotton, which he sourced in northern Paris.
‘I bought as much as I could carry on my bike,’ he said. The cheat jacket concept clearly landed with him on more than a technical level. ‘It’s a nice name, because it’s cheating. It only has good fabric in the front. I thought that’s a really nice idea. Sometimes I think the back is more important than the front. Because in the back, we are all the same.’
It is the kind of thinking that sits comfortably within the Vivienne Westwood tradition: political without being preachy, conceptually loaded without losing the clothes.
A Charity Collaboration and a Quieter Kind of Rebellion
It has been less than four years since Kronthaler fully assumed creative leadership of the house following Westwood’s passing, and a decade since the main runway line, formerly known as Gold Label, was renamed to reflect his design contributions. The question of how he carries the brand’s activist inheritance is one he is still working through.
At the show, the brand unveiled a T-shirt collaboration supporting Body & Soul, a suicide-prevention charity. Kronthaler framed it in terms of values rather than gestures. ‘Vivienne was a very different type of person, outspoken, a fighter, and so on. I do things in another way, and this is the first time I’m really comfortable doing this kind of thing. It’s about honoring life and not destroying it, and that’s the simplest step.’
The rebel spirit Westwood built the house on is still present in SS27. It is just expressed through a nightshirt, a load of Bazan fabric hauled back on a bicycle, and a crown that says ‘chaos’ inside a 100-year-old women’s shelter. Quieter, yes. Gone, no.
