While the fashion world recognises Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo as the architects of seismic cultural shifts through their groundbreaking designs, my perspective comes from a more intimate vantage point, having had the privilege of collaborating with both these visionaries over decades.
My introduction to Vivienne came in 1976 during my first year studying fashion at St Martins School of Art. The setting was Louise’s, that legendary lesbian nightclub on Poland Street in London — perhaps the only venue willing to welcome us vinyl-wrapped punks through its doors. The formidable hostess, Madame Louise, presided over proceedings resplendent in grey bouffant, coordinating mink stole, and ‘almost diamonds.’ While the DJ typically spun punk anthems from The Clash, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees, each evening concluded with Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” — Madame Louise’s personal signature that invariably emptied the floor.
That particular evening, Vivienne and I found ourselves the sole survivors still moving to the music in the dimmed light. When I tentatively offered “Hello Vivienne,” she shot back “What do you do?” My proud declaration — “I’m a fashion student at St Martin’s” — earned me a withering look and grimace. Then, as luck would have it, I trod on her foot. She yelped; I was mortified. Yet from this inauspicious beginning bloomed both friendship and creative partnership (those tweed crowns, the mini tricornes). In Paris, I even found myself backstage as her emergency machinist, frantically constructing two mini-crinis, sixty minutes past showtime for her Autumn/Winter 1985 presentation.
Back in London, we were neighbours, Vivienne speeding past on her bike whilst I waited at the bus stop, but not constant companions. Still, at every industry gathering, opening or photography session, we would inevitably find each other — two almost respectable London fashion designers.
My first encounter with Rei Kawakubo was equally serendipitous, happening in 1984 at Anchorage airport, Alaska. Back then, with Russian airspace off-limits pre-glasnost, Anchorage served as the re-fuelling stop for flights between Europe and Asia. Beneath the watchful glass eyes of an enormous taxidermied polar bear in the sprawling duty-free emporium, Rei approached me — though I failed to recognise her. “Stephen Jones, I like your hats,” she said. I responded with a vague nod before walking off.
Fortunately, my sharp-eyed assistant Sibylle de St Phalle witnessed what was happening. Racing over, she hissed urgently: “You fool, that’s Rei Kawakubo” — even then fashion’s most venerated avant-garde force. Proper introductions followed. Later in Tokyo, Rei extended a dinner invitation where we spoke through fashion. Our collaboration began with Spring/Summer 1985, initially trading sketches via FedEx (an agonising five-day journey) before graduating to faxes I still cherish. This privilege continues today through hats, fragrances and Dover Street Markets. My weekday uniform remains Comme des Garçons Homme Plus or Deux suits — five days in seven, and I even travel in them, they are already creased!
Countless scholarly examinations have dissected Vivienne’s evolution through her retail incarnations: Let It Rock morphing into Sex, then Seditionaries, Worlds End, Nostalgia of Mud, culminating in the Vivienne Westwood empire spanning numerous lines and products. Malcolm McLaren served as the catalyst for her early iconoclastic phase — without their fusion of Malcolm’s cultural acuity and Vivienne’s fashion genius, punk’s birth in both music and dress would never have occurred.
Her subsequent independent work channeled haute couture, marrying authentic Harris tweeds with sumptuous Swiss silks, building an international following and cementing her status as fashion’s premier rebel.
Like Chanel and Dior before her, Vivienne’s work transformed fashion’s trajectory by simultaneously capturing and creating the zeitgeist. True fashion genius lies in this synchronicity — designers intuiting desires the public hasn’t yet identified.
Initially, both designers presented collections in their home territories, but Kawakubo’s impact became explosive when she debuted in Paris in 1981. She has consistently resisted the “Japanese designer” label — her Place Vendôme headquarters and French brand names telegraph this clearly. Early-80s French fashion found itself unprepared for such disruption; their conception of Japanese design had been shaped by Hanae Mori’s Imperial elegance, Kenzo’s joyful prints and Issey Miyake’s intellectual approach. Comme des Garçons was a fashion outcast that became a sensation.
Jean Paul Gaultier even responded to this Japanese “challenge” and Kawakubo’s persistent use of confrontational black with his 1985 presentation titled “The Return of Prints.”
Westwood, conversely, embraced British iconography, and Paris became crucial for establishing her major design house credentials. The British press, then as now threatened by her political messaging through clothing, had dismissed her as insignificant, driving her to seek validation abroad. The French celebrated Westwood because she employed a vocabulary they recognised: History and Royalty, Drama and Sexuality.
Vivienne’s impact on Rei is unmistakable. The creative space punk carved out became territory Rei could claim and transform, offering an ideological and aesthetic philosophy her clientele craved. Their paths subsequently diverged dramatically — Vivienne twisting established conventions while Rei chased pure abstraction.
Yet striking parallels mark their trajectories. Consider the Westwood Orb alongside the Play Heart. Both built formidable independent enterprises. Both found essential support in their husbands: Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne, whose design consistency freed her for political activism; Adrian Joffe for Rei, constructing retail kingdoms through fragrances and Dover Street Market while she ventured into appearance’s experimental extremes.
I never asked them about their opinions of each other — likely they wouldn’t have answered anyway. Certainly, being women of comparable generations creates connections, but regardless of vocabulary, their message remains identical: limitless creativity deployed in fashion’s revolution.
Now as their work converges at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria, the resulting exhibition breaks new ground — two revolutionary minds expressing themselves through appearance and manifestos. Pure fashion rebellion.
This isn’t a parallel display like the 2017 Margiela show at Antwerp’s MoMu, where Martin’s world sat alongside his work for Hermès. Nor the striking affinities in “Schiaparelli & Prada; Impossible Conversations” at the Met. Here at the NGV, the displays deliberately refuse to synchronise. What unfolds is a broad sweep of Vivienne’s legacy against Rei’s fundamental resistance to looking backward — for Kawakubo, past, present, and future merge into one. She remains “not so interested in posterity.”
This disconnect feels entirely authentic to both women, even if it complicates the curatorial narrative. I imagine Rei and Vivienne bumping into each other at some art opening, warmly acknowledging each other’s talent without air-kissing, or posing for Vogue online.
The Gallery commissioned me to create headdresses for Vivienne’s displays — visual and emotional gestures atop the mannequins’ heads. These aren’t fake hats but head decorations connecting the clothes, the seasons and the architecture housing them. Most importantly, they capture Vivienne’s irrepressible spirit.
Rei’s mannequins, conversely, are headless — a curatorial choice that distances her work from Vivienne’s whilst focusing our attention purely on the garments and their extraordinary proportions. The clothes float as art objects, expressions of soft sculpture.
These women forged an entirely new language of clothing, much as Vionnet and Chanel had achieved a century before them. We cannot approach modern appearance without viewing it through the frameworks they established, the territories they claimed. Shredded garments and raw hems merely marked the starting point.
