We were having a browse through the archives and loved reading the posts that stirred the most interest! Revisit the top 10 writings that most tickled your fancy…
2) Vogue cover stars at Chelsea Library. The Shrimp, Twiggy, La Moss and Naomi Campbell all graced the cover of Chelsea Library’s Vogue magazine collection
10) Winter Kimonos: beautiful images from beautiful books in Chelsea’s costume and fashion collection
Kimono by Issey Miyake
We’ve covered everything from swimming costumes to kimonos, books to ghosts, in our blog, and there’s plenty more where that comes from…what would you like to see in your local library blog next?
As it’s World Book Day, we thought we’d take the chance to show off some of our latest aquisitions from the Chelsea Library fashion collection…any excuse really!
Natalia Vodianova plays Alice with milliner Stephen Jones as the Mad Hatter and designer Christian Lacroix as the March Hare.
From Vogue: the Editor’s Eye,(edited by Eva MacSweeney, 2012), a glossy new purchase full of fantastic images. This photograph is by Annie Leibovitz, from December 2003.
Isabella Blow’s fashion collection
This image is from Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore! (edited by Alistair O’Neill, 2013), a publication that accompanied her fabulous collection, photographed by Nick Knight at Blow’s ancestral home.
Avedon Fashion, 1944-2000
Another new purchase… Avedon Fashion, 1944-2000, a book encompassing seven decades of extraordinary images by phographer Richard Avedon. This black-and-white shot was taken in 1959.
Naomi Campbell
Naomi Campbell races a cheetah in Hair: Fashion and Fantasy by Laurent Philippon, 2013. Photographed by Jean Paul Goude, another striking image found on our shelves.
Looking through the large scale images in these books is a great way to appreciate some amazing work. As well as our shiny new books, our costume collection also contains some treasures from a bygone age… fashion from before the birth of photography even. The contrast between fashion images then and now is astonishing.
These old volumes are really tactile things that we love to pore over. Do come along to the library to have a look! Happy World Book Day!
English Woman’s Domestic Magazine, June 1867.La Belle Assemblee, December 1808
Bibliography
Hair: Fashion and Fantasy by Laurent Philippon, 2013
1977 was the year I became the infamous High Princess of Punk – the darling and the damned of the media, but mostly the latter. In fact what I was doing wasn’t Punk, but I can’t say that it was that it had nothing to do with it, I called Conceptual Chic – but the press as a voice hailed it as Punk and that’s where it stuck.
It was a journey into London street culture, that’s true, but as in everything I do there where many influences at work, some lurking away in my subconscious, some staring me in the face, openly challenging me.
Another of the designers featured in the V&A’s exhibition was Dame Vivienne Westwood, a key figure in the Punk movement. Her partner was Malcolm McLaren, inventor of the Sex Pistols.
From Vogue, August 1987. Article by Liz Jobey
The Queen of the King’s Road arrived on a bicycle. She was wearing a dark grey botany wool twinset with matching sash from her latest collection, a thick cotton knee-length dirndl skirt in red and white, pale grey tights, a pair of square-toed triple tongued grey leather lace-up hip-hop shoes left over from the Hobo year of 1984, and a single string of pearls. She parked under the World’s End clock, it’s backwards whizzing hand stilled before opening time. She was sorry she was late.
Vivienne Westwood, Vogue August 1987
Shops in King’s Road
A selection of Westwood shops from Vivienne Westwood by Catherine McDermott.
Vivienne Westwood shop fronts taken from Catherine McDermott’s book
Her first shop was Let It Rock, on the premises of Paradise Garage, further down the King’s Road.
[People] from all over the country, flocked to the shop. In the years that followed, they were replaced by punks fighting for bondage trousers in the mid 1970’s.
Before that it had been Sex, and Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die; after it became World’s End. McLaren had the ideas and Vivienne carried them through.
When she began designing, Westwood adapted existing styles. ‘One day I put a hole for the neck in a T-shirt just here’ – indicating just above the breast – ‘and I knew it would do something with the body in an extremely sexy way. All those ripped things came from picture’s we’d seen of film stars looking really sexy in ripped clothes.
Bondage trousers – image from Catherine McDermott’s book
Vivienne Westwood clothes, Harper’s February 1985
Vivienne Westwood clothes, Harper’s February 1985
Above images from Harpers & Queens, February 1985
Six years later, in the October 1993 issue of Vogue, we see Queen Viv, (at that time she was an OBE – Westwood advanced to Dame in 2006 by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II) when interviewed by Yvonne Roberts wearing:
check pyjamas, white socks, lots of gold chains, white blonde hair. She has a beautiful unmade-up face, long graceful fingers, pale orange eyebrows like delicate tracks in the desert and smokes enough Gitanes to kill off the entire Foreign Legion.
Way Out West
Queen Viv, Harper’s & Queens October 1993
Queen Viv is wearing a full satin skirt, matching fitted jacket, gold and diamante earrings and matching choker.
Shoes by Judith Miller
Her shoes are distinctive, and as well as high heels and platforms her bold imagination reinterprets classic forms. Take, for example, this ghillie – an exaggerated interpretation of a traditional Scottish shoe.
However such style can result in catastrophe – supermodel Naomi Campbell stumbled and fell on the catwalk while modelling a pair of super elevated ghillie platforms with 9-inch heels and 4 inch platforms at Westwood’s 1993 fall-winter Anglomania collection in Paris.
Wearing Vivienne Westwood’s high heels – combined with slippery cream rubber stockings they made this a show to remember.
Killer Westwood heels
Naomi Campbell falls
Vogue August 1987 Classic Good Looks
Westwood is also well known for using classic British fabrics such as Harris Tweed, tartan and Scottish cashmere.
Vivienne Westwood, focussing on the admirably staunch image of the Queen, on Harris Tweed. Velvet collars and princess coats and liberty bodices, allows women to appear both part of tradition and romantically, rather sexily modern.
The author of the article, Georgina Godley, says
‘British women are beginning to see fashion subjectively, not dressing for men anymore, but for themselves and other women. They have been given freedom at last, a passport to doing their own thing.
Vogue, August 1987
Changing the guard: Vivienne Westwood’s about turn with that traditional British uniform, the suit, throwing a few contemporary curves with peplum and Peter Pan collar, scarlet Harris wool and black velvet, gilt buttons down the back, at World’s End, 430 Kings Road SW10.
Vogue, August 1987
Switch on traditional country clothes and colours: velvet-collared princess coat, new and not entirely well behaved, in Vivienne Westwood’s russet Harris Tweed, cut short to curve and flare out at the back, the velveteen collar and pockets flecked with Lurex, at Worlds end as before.
Westwood in Vogue, 1980s – 1990s
Looking at Westwood’s coverage in Vogue through the late 80’s and early 90’s, the collections continue to be very British and very sexy.
Vogue, February 1988
Vogue, February 1992
Further reading
If you want to find out more, Chelsea Reference Library’s fashion and costume collection has the above editions of Vogue and Harpers & Queen and an extensive collection of books.
In the library or the comfort of your own home, with a library card you can access Westwood’s design in the Berg Fashion Library online.
Further reading – all titles can be found in the Costume Collection at Chelsea Reference Library:
rbkc libraries blog 