How Vivienne Westwood Redefined Corsets From Underwear To Outerwear

Punk queen Vivienne Westwood, during her lifetime, was always reinventing trends and traditional styles. At the core of her mission was femininity and designs that encouraged heightened sexuality with fabric clinging onto all the right places.

The English designer believed clothing must provoke a reaction for the wearer and the observer. “Minimalism is a dominant force because people are afraid of committing an error in taste. They prefer to say nothing rather than make a mistake,” Westwood told The National.

Although she does modern design, her source of inspiration is usually historical as she deconstructs and reinvents traditional garments while infusing modern aesthetics to accentuate the wearer’s feminine side.

However, her designs are not androgynous. She simply believes that all proportions of the feminine and masculine sides of a human being are to be explored in fashion. She explored this in her collection ‘Unisex’ where women wore trousers and men wore dresses, and in her 1987 collection ‘Harris Tweed’.

The corset was a clothing item, but Vivienne Westwood’s reinvention transformed it into outerwear. The collection staged in London inspired by the 18th-century corset was named the ‘Stature of Liberty’. It was a collection aimed at reclaiming female power and sex by changing the corset from an underwear to a provocative outerwear piece.

The punk queen did this for subsequent collections, including the 1988 Time Machine and the 1990s Portrait collection, where she updated an 18th-century painting and underwear to a modern fashion piece.

With this collection, she emphasised the feminine form by employing modern designs. The portrait collection is unarguably one of her most famous designs ever and has become collectible worthy, with celebrities like the Kardashians, FKA Twigs, and Megan Thee Stallion having the honour of wearing these archived designs.

Now, corsets have become a very popular fashion piece to elevate outfits. In recent times fashion designers worldwide have incorporated the femininity and exoticness it gives into their clothing items. Especially in Nigeria, where with every new owambe design, a corset structure is attached to keep the wearer snatched – a popularisation and standard we all owe to Vivienne Westwood.