At Vivienne Westwood, history has never been particularly well behaved. It is borrowed, distorted and sometimes treated with outright irreverence, which is precisely why the house’s references to the past rarely feel nostalgic. For Fall/Winter 2026–2027, Andreas Kronthaler returned to that instinct with a collection that appeared chaotic by design, allowing different periods, characters and ideas to collide without forcing them into a neat conclusion.
Heritage in motion
Kronthaler described the collection through an image of clothes thrown into the air, landing in a pile from which everyone could simply take something and put it on. On the runway, that imagined disorder became a cast of characters rather than a sequence built around a single silhouette. Milanese loden coats and checked tailoring appeared alongside lingerie, elongated dresses, archaic headwear and pieces whose proportions seemed deliberately difficult to place within one period or category.
That apparent disorder was not a rejection of the Westwood vocabulary. British tailoring, corsetry, historical dress, punk and deliberate disruption have long occupied the same world, with clothing used to question convention rather than simply reproduce it. Under Kronthaler, those elements continue to circulate, but their combinations have become increasingly instinctive. Fall/Winter 2026–2027 did not carefully separate the house’s different identities. It allowed them to overlap.
Romy, Pasolini and borrowed histories
Behind that eclecticism were two particularly different references. One was Romy Schneider, the Austrian actress Kronthaler described as fearless and committed to artistry, qualities he associated with Vivienne Westwood herself. The other came from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1972 adaptation of The Canterbury Tales, particularly the costumes created by Danilo Donati. Their medieval eccentricity found its way into exaggerated hats, layered silhouettes and the collection’s broader sense of characters assembled for a journey without ever becoming straightforward historical quotation.
The references mattered less as literal sources than for the freedom they gave Kronthaler to move between periods. Historical dress could sit beside contemporary underwear, while something apparently traditional could be destabilised through proportion, styling or construction. Rather than reconstructing the past, the collection treated it as material to be handled, rearranged and occasionally contradicted.
Tartan, lingerie and beautiful disorder
Tailoring provided some of the collection’s clearest moments. Checked loden coats carried weight and structure, while other pieces distorted familiar ideas of refinement through exaggerated proportions, unexpected styling or fabrics that seemed to resist conventional elegance. A checked dress with generous sleeves and a full skirt might have approached something almost demure were it not for blue threads emerging irregularly from its surface. Elsewhere, a nylon cloqué wrap coat was pulled close to the body with a gold eyeleted belt, combining volume with a much harder line.
But order never lasted for long. Lingerie moved out from beneath the clothes and became part of their construction, appearing across genders rather than functioning as an exclusively feminine code. Refashioned underwear became frilled playsuits, embroidered net exposed the body beneath, while a strapless bias-cut minidress in shirting silk and cotton sat against headwear that seemed to belong to another century. Gender distinctions dissolved in the process, continuing a freedom of dress that has remained fundamental to the house.
The tension between refinement and disorder gave the collection much of its character. Westwood’s historical vocabulary was present, but Kronthaler resisted presenting it as a set of precious house codes. Instead, clothes looked worn, rearranged and occasionally misbehaved. Smudged lipstick reinforced that sense of imperfection, as though the characters had lived in their clothes before reaching the runway.
Even the bride refused a pristine ending. Dressed in unfinished double duchesse satin, she appeared carrying a bouquet of radishes, her makeup already blurred. The image was absurd, romantic and slightly unruly at once, bringing together several of the contradictions that had run through the collection.
Keeping Westwood alive
There is something important in Kronthaler’s refusal to make the Westwood archive too reverential. Heritage houses often face the difficult task of keeping their signatures recognisable while proving that those signatures can still produce something new. Here, continuity came through attitude rather than repetition. The tartans, historical references, exposed bodies and unconventional proportions mattered, but so did the freedom with which they were put together.
Fall/Winter 2026–2027 was not interested in resolving those contradictions. Its history remained visible but never untouched, passed through different periods and personalities until chronology itself became difficult to follow. For a house built on questioning the rules of dress, perhaps heritage is most convincing when it is allowed to misbehave.
May