Kronthaler's Vivienne Westwood Spring 2027 Puts the Good Fabric in Front and the Leftovers in Back

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood showed its Spring 2027 collection in Paris on Saturday, October 3, at the Palais de la Femme, which ELLE describes as a historic Salvation Army shelter for vulnerable women and children, now in its 100th year. WWD lists Jaden Smith and Heidi Klum, with her 16-year-old daughter, among the guests.

Farida Khelfa walked first, per WWD, and the poet Stuart McKenzie performed. WWD says Natasha Lyonne made a playful cameo in a bright leopard-print jacket, worn open. ELLE lists mini gowns shaped like bows, earthy knitwear and the house's check prints, along with a crown spelling out "chaos" and oversized leaf hats, set against the venue's Art Deco tiles.

Colour from Barbès, structure from a cheat jacket

Kronthaler told WWD the colour began in Barbès, the multicultural neighbourhood in northern Paris, where he shopped for fabric and bought vivid Bazin cottons, choosing lengths "very randomly." ELLE quotes him saying he bought as much as he could carry on his bike.

The structure came from a late-17th-century "cheat jacket" he came across through a London costume institute. Its good cloth is only on the front, while the back is made up of leftovers. Kronthaler took that as a design rule and applied it to different mixes of materials through the show. "The back is just as important as the front. The collection is all about movement," he told WWD, and he told ELLE that "in the back, we are all the same."

Nightshirts and a hot summer

The summer itself was the other reference. Kronthaler told ELLE that his "biggest point of reference was this summer," and that he wore a nightshirt all day and "went everywhere" in it, and wanted everything to be "as light as possible." WWD, which says he cycled and shopped in his, ties that to the men's looks, slouchy nightshirts and swimwear, and quotes him backstage: "A man should be as sexy as women. I don't see that difference."

ELLE adds that the show included a T-shirt collaboration for the charity Body & Soul, which works on suicide prevention. It also puts the show in context: less than four years since Kronthaler took over creative leadership of the whole house after Westwood's death, and ten since her main line was renamed to carry his name. He told ELLE this is the first time he feels really comfortable working this way, and that the point is "honoring life and not destroying it."