You may like Vivienne Westwood or you may not. But one thing is certain: her attitude is not an ordinary one. The iconic British designer never courted approval. She never bowed to trends, especially the fleeting, hollow ones churned out by fast fashion, born and buried in the blink of an eye. She never sought appeasement, nor did she ever aim to leave eyes, minds, or souls untouched by her work.
Her legacy was cut from the fabric of dissent and true unicity, and stitched back together with pearls, safety pins and pure provocation coming straight from the punk tradition and now on the catwalks of the most important fashion weeks.
Conformity has been always sold as elegance, right? Not for Westwood, who offered a true alternative and not mere gate-keeping of the status quo: jewellery that talks back when inquired, and that dares to take the word even in the world of conformism and silence. Vivienne Westwood always challenged the polite codes of statement pieces by becoming the statement itself. That’s what you should expect before fastening one of Vivienne Westwood’s necklaces for women.
A necklace, in the context framed by Vivienne Westwood, is sure more than a detail of fashion. It’s a line drawn in the sand. It can complete a look the way a final word completes a sentence, being a nice addition and not necessarily the main character on the stage. It’s not merely decorative, but complementary. When worn, it sharpens, it gives structure to intention, it adds notes which make your loo perfect. In a way which is far from dressing to be seen by others and helping the ones dressing to be recognised by themselves.
There’s a strange and harmonious strength in choosing necklaces, fashion items, jewels that aren’t shouting to be noticed, yet totally refuse to be ignored. Westwood’s necklaces never beg for attention – as they wouldn’t be Vivienne’s pieces of art. They never shrink, though, into blandness. They assert a third way, which is Vivienne’s way: to be different, but on your own terms. To refuse both the tired orthodoxy of quiet luxury and the shrillness of trend-for-trend’s sake.
No sparkle for sparkle’s sake, no theatricality without wit or meaning.
Flirting with what’s left of humanity
Westwood’s necklaces often flirt with imbalance, and asymmetry is not a production mistake, but a clear intention. One side may carry more weight; one drop pendant might fall at an unexpected and irrational angle. You may choose a chain twisting in defiance of geometric rules. But isn’t that the whole point? Symmetry pleases the eye, but asymmetry is able to provoke the mind. It is challenging, in an era played on easy mode even by fashion.
Irregularity becomes a fingerprint. You see it in the hand-set stones, in the slight tension of a metal curve, in finishes that feel less “machined” and more “wrought”, never seeking the pristine (and dull) precision of mass manufacture, but celebrating the trace of the maker. That little personal sing, that fraction off-centre, that whisper of the human hand, separating craft from product.
And perhaps that’s the most quietly radical thing today: choosing jewellery made with humanity in a world desperate to be smoothed out by algorithms and AI. Where automation mimics taste and software edits expression, Vivienne Westwood necklaces still say, proudly, a person made this. Not polished to nothingness. Never meaningless, never fashionable for the sake of it. However dull it may sound, a statement for human beings, which are and will remain, in the style of Vivienne Westwood’s creations, the only thing that matters.
