Vivienne Westwood’s Jewelry Makes Me Want to Live in a Painting

Vivienne Westwood is often remembered as a force in fashion, marrying her punk, stick-it-to-the-man sensibilities with a clear tenderness for femininity — for giving women garments like snatched corsets, draped sleeves, and billowing skirts. (Her logo, that famous orb with a ring around it, is a subversive take on the Sovereign’s Orb, a motif used to represent the British monarchy.)

What might sometimes slide under the radar (for those who weren’t affected by the pearl choker epidemic of 2020) is Westwood’s love of jewelry. A new book, out on December 2, chronicles the late designer’s whimsical world of necklaces, rings, brooches, and earrings, especially the earrings. In the foreword, Andreas Kronthaler, Westwood’s professional and life partner, wrote, “Vivienne loved earrings — she was never without, and changed them according to what she was wearing.”

Flipping through the book, which features Westwood’s out-of-this-world creations — chunky padlock necklaces, pearl chokers with gargantuan Westwood orbs, and dangling, jewel-encrusted earrings featuring an 18th-century portrait — makes me want to escape into another world, one where everything is doused in pastels and adorned in gems. Okay, maybe Westwood’s pastel penis pendant doesn’t make me feel that way. But even in that piece, Westwood inarguably balanced romanticism, and therefore escapism, with erotica through her jewelry and bridged the gap (more like cavern) between BDSM and baroque. She created works that felt sensual and alluring, like her famous pearl chokers and marijuana-shaped pendants, meant to dangle in cleavage, and made them beautiful, bedazzling them in glittering rhinestones. She churned them out in punchy colors like bright greens, pinks, blues, and reds.

The book exhibits the best of Westwood’s style and legacy, the tightrope walk between glamour — the bow-shaped pendants, the dazzling tiaras — and playfulness (lest we forget her spoon earrings, made from full-size spoons, and a necklace made partially from crustacean claws). All of it, much like the clothing she created, feels like a lesson in escapism. It’s jewelry that makes me want to step into a Jean-Honoré Fragonard painting and cosplay as a rococo lady of the court. Which checks out, as Kronthaler notes the couple would go to museums together and gawk at the objects from the 18th century when “everybody wore pearls,” he wrote. They latched on to the concept and made pearls a Westwood staple: “We wanted to make women look like they had just stepped out of the canvas. A moving picture that comes to life, in order to seduce the mind through the eyes.”

I own only one piece of Westwood jewelry, a pair of shimmering pink heart-shaped earrings. But I can confirm, whenever I wear them, I feel like a work of art.