Spring 2013 Fashion Week: Erdem and Vivienne Westwood Red Label

Vivienne Westwood Red Label
The beauty of Vivienne Westwood is that she can start off with literally any theme and still have the resulting show turn out like a giant "fuck you". With this season's Red Label collection she went for a ladylike mid-20th-century aesthetic, using boxy woollen suits and 1950s cocktail dresses as a jumping-off point.

The styling helped a lot to temper the relatively conservative nature of this collection, with models stepping out onto the catwalk wearing Crayola-hued facepaint and Stepford-parody hairstyles. This wasn't my favourite Westwood collection, perhaps because for once she didn't seem to be designing for her own personal wardrobe. I often find that Westwood is at her best -- or at least, at her most Westwood, which is pretty much the same thing -- when she's courting outright ugliness, rather than this watered-down throwback to the period when she was mocking the fashions of the British aristocracy.

Erdem: 2013 Resort Collection.

When reviewing high-end fashion, I tend to detach my own dress sense from my overall judgement of the designs. Given a boatload of cash, I'd probably wade straight into the deep end of couture fashion with brands like Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh, bypassing the more "wearable" options entirely. Erdem Moriaglu's clothes are my one foray into the pretty, feminine side of mainstream high-end fashion. Despite the plethora of florals and delicate New York Heiress At A Tea Party silhouettes, there's something sharp enough about Erdem's style that I can't help but love him season after season.

Photos: Erdem/Boo George.

Erdem's designs vacillate between ethereally floaty and demurely structured, and all appear to be aimed at the type of woman who never encounters dirt or breaks the ankle-straps on her shoes. In the past he's experimented the kind of super-smart coats and suits that are worn by terrifyingly stylish New York society matrons, giving the houndstooth and floral patterns enough modern digital-print youthfulness that there's no danger of them seeming stuffy or old-fashioned.