| Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood presented its Spring 2027 collection at the Palais de la Femme in Paris, opening with Farida Khelfa and closing with Kronthaler kissing poet Stuart McKenzie. The show drew on bazin cottons bought in Barbès and a late 17th-century Cheat Jacket. It also renewed the house’s partnership with suicide-prevention charity Body & Soul. |
When the Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood‘s Spring 2027 collection was presented at the Palais de la Femme, Paris was jammed with Pride marchers and flea markets. Cars crawled. Guests arrived late, and a few never arrived at all. Jaden Smith made it. So did Heidi Klum with her 16-year-old daughter, Lou.
The show started a little past 2:30. Hermès was next, and no one was going to wait for those still stuck in traffic from the Noir show across town. Farida Khelfa opened the lineup. Natasha Lyonne followed, shaking her shoulders in a wide-open leopard-print jacket, and the room relaxed.
Kronthaler was waiting at the front when I arrived. “It’s all about what you want to wear,” he said of the season. The collection began in the northern Paris neighborhood of Barbès, where Kronthaler wandered through fabric shops and picked up bright bazin cottons, cutting lengths “very randomly.” Those cottons became voluminous nightshirts saturated in color. Light tulle corsetry floated over satin skirts and bodices.
A second source sat much further back. Through a London costume institute, Kronthaler had seen a Cheat Jacket from the late 17th century. Its fine fabric was only on the front. The back was pieced together from scraps. He appreciated the honesty of that design and reworked the idea, pairing different materials on one silhouette. “The back is just as important as the front,” he said. “The collection is all about movement.“
Then came the clothes, and they were loud. Paisley platforms sprouted devil’s horns. Badges announced, “Boys ❤️ My Swag.” Leopard bloomers sat beneath askew vests billed as “luxury jersey,” and a lightning-strike swimsuit arrived alongside a tangerine pool float. Penis charms hung from golden knits like trophies and were worn beneath gingham bustiers. Oversized gingham pannier skirts met frilled satin blouses cut to the navel. Some of it was carnival, some of it was carnal, and none of it apologized.
The contrasts kept coming. Court references sat next to beachwear, and flowers were piled on flowers until a bodice resembled a garden bed. The house’s punk codes were all present: familiar and unforced. Nothing felt museum-bound. Kronthaler clearly enjoyed himself, and the audience could tell.
Menswear took center stage. He sent out muscular men in slouchy nightshirts and swimwear – a cheeky argument for male seduction. “A man should be as sexy as a woman,” he said backstage. “I don’t see that difference.” The nightshirt came from experience. After a brutal heat wave, he wore one all day while cycling and shopping, with nothing underneath. He said that strangers smiled at him and greeted him warmly.
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Beneath the fun, however, was something more serious. Kronthaler told me that this was the first collection since his wife’s death in which he felt he had found his way of continuing her habit of using clothes to express her convictions. He renewed the house’s collaboration with Body & Soul, a suicide-prevention charity. “This is my way of putting out a message to the world,” he said. It was a quiet admission amid the noise, and it landed.
Vivienne Westwood herself was present, too, by recording. Between the verses of punk poet Stuart McKenzie, who performed live over a loud track, her voice cut in with a favorite line: “You get ideas by developing ideas that already exist.” I thought of her 1988 television appearance when she sent out models in mini crinis and the studio audience howled. The host threatened to send the next guest home if the laughter continued. Westwood stayed calm. “You can laugh, but look as well,” she told him.
Today, the crowd looked, and nobody laughed unkindly. At the finale, Kronthaler kissed McKenzie as the last model left the runway, and the Hermès guests rushed for the exit.
