Given Dame Westwood s memorably unmediated declaration that she had nothing to do with her Red collection, she has been remarkably well-served by whoever is responsible. They ve managed to commercialize her Queen Mother-on-crack aesthetic so that it plays to a whole new audience of pop-ettes, a posse of whom were parked in the front row, alongside hoary old fans like Boy George. The pop-ettes cheered lustily every time Pixie Geldof, one of their own, passed by on the catwalk, trying her hardest to cop some bad-girl attitude. Once, that would have been entirely in keeping with the clothes, but it s funny how Viv s fashion radicalism has devolved into the kind of decorous dresses that would be suitable for a garden party at the local vicarage: tulip-printed (paired with a white cardigan); draped and polka-dotted with a portrait neckline. Even her exaggerated forties-styled tailoring, for all its asymmetrical touches, now looks more and more conservative (though a brocade jacket and swagged lilac skirt on Coco Rocha proved that Westwood s va-va-voom factor remains undiminished). For Spring, Red occasionally mixed up the classicism with argyle-patterned short shorts, or diaper shorts, or a pair of drop-crotch linen pants cut on the bias. But what ultimately lingered were the high-waisted gray trousers worn with a lilac blouse, a distinctly ladylike counterpoint to the save-the-rain-forest message the dame printed on her invitation.
