Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood
Andreas Kronthaler is ready to have fun again.
For fall 2024, he had SunBengSitting x Sons of Sissy, a Vienna-based folk dance trio — Simon Mayer, Matteo Haitzmann, Simon Wehrli — over for a mind-boggling performance with them spinning, whipping, dancing, singing and yodeling. Even wood chopping and butt slapping were involved.
It was hard to decide where to look. As the performance proceeded, models came out with codpiece inspired strap-ons worn outside of trousers, and looks with pronounced breast plate details.
Backstage, Kronthaler said he looked at late Renaissance costume in a Giovanni Battista Moroni exhibition in Milan, as well as sports protection gear. What do the two have in common? Codpieces, a fashion stable that was in vogue for over a century during the Renaissance in Italy. The designer said he wanted to bring it back and put it out there, for fun.
“The menswear in the Renaissance was quite interesting. There was all these laws against wearing too revealing clothes. In Florence they'd put you in prison because at one point the men really let it all hang out,” said Kronthaler.
He noted that the Patterns of Fashion by Janet Arnold was a key source of reference to construct historical inspired pieces seen across this collection, and before.
The use of black, especially in the evening wear section, was also a nod to the trend of the 1600s.
“You see a lot of black because of it being very fashionable then. We love this color. It's very convenient but at the same time the most elegant of all colors,” he added.
Essentially, the collection challenged the notion of elegance in today's culture. One can argue the bottomless check look Sam Smith sported was pure chaos, but to the fans of Vivienne Westwood, elegance came from within, and Smith has plenty of it.