Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss and Christina Hendricks were among a whole host of famous faces who paid tribute to the late Dame Vivienne Westwood at a memorial service in London on Thursday.
Dame Vivienne was a world famous fashion designer, punk icon and environmental activist. She died in December last year at the age of 81, having established herself on the fashion scene in the 1970s. Westwood was well known for her irreverent take on clothing and was responsible for some of fashion’s most famous designs, including Carrie Bradshaw’s wedding dress in 2008’s ‘Sex and the City: The Movie’. She was made a dame at Buckingham Palace in 2006.
The memorial, which was held at London’s Southwark Cathedral, saw guests style themselves in some of Dame Vivienne’s most iconic designs, with tartan prints and bold, colourful tailoring featuring heavily.
The memorial service came the day before London Fashion Week is due to kick off, where designers will show off their collections for Autumn / Winter 2023/4. The event is being dedicated to Dame Vivienne, thanks to her decades long role as a mainstay of British fashion.
Following its New York counterpart, London Fashion Week opens its doors on Friday (17 February). It will be the first full schedule LFW since the death of Queen Elizabeth II last September which saw a significantly scaled back event out of respect for the long-reigning monarch.
While the five day event will still take place for a significant chunk online – a hangover from the COVID-19 pandemic – shows will be presented across the capital at various venues, marking a departure from previous LFWs. In the past, iconic London locations including The Natural History Museum and Somerset House have played main host to the event, which was founded in 1983 by the British Fashion Council. The biannual event is now well established as one of the ‘big four’ fashion weeks, alongside Paris, New York and Milan’s offerings.
In London, women’s and men’s collections will be shown – this is also the case in New York, but Paris and Milan have separate fashion weeks for those two gender’s events.
While it’s possible to livestream a number of shows, the in-person events are sadly invite-only and are usually attended by a mix of industry buyers, fashion press and celebrities and influencers. Thanks to social media, you won’t have to miss out though – along with live-streaming, images and videos of the shows will be shared instantaneously online.
Source: .euronews
