Sold! Biggest Westwood auction since death coming to London this week

The biggest Vivienne Westwood auction since her death last December is coming to London tomorrow (June 20).

Few captured and created British culture like her. Now you can buy a piece of her legacy — anarchic and visionary to the end. During the two-day auction at Bermondsey’s Kerry Taylor Auctions 124 archival collectable looks will go under the hammer. “This is the biggest Westwood sale since her death, with 124 lots of archive pieces which chart her entire career,” says the auctioneer, who in the past has sold Audrey Hepburn’s haute couture and Princess Diana’s velvet ‘Travolta’ dress, which made £220,000 in 2019.

The Mr Steven Philip Collection: Part 1 is thought to be one of the most extensive collections of Vivienne Westwood in the world — the second part of the auction will take place in December. Philip, co-founder of London vintage boutique Rellik, has been slowly building the collection for thirty years.

Both Westwood’s career and tomorrow’s auction begin at 430 Kings Road, with the SEX shop, run with her then partner and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and famed for its fetish fashions and pink, foam letter sign. A full look from 1974, its opening year, is Lot 1; complete with ‘Prostitute’ black stilettos, which read ‘especially for SEX’ on the insole. “Then we move into ‘Seditionaries’, to which the shop changed its name in December 1976,” Taylor says. “We have a fantastic all-black, bondage slash parachute set.” The lot is estimated to make £3,000 to £5,000.

Vintage Westwood prices have boomed since her passing, Taylor explains: “We had a sale in March which I put my less good Westwood in, and the prices were astonishing.” The gift is that the looks were crafted to last. “Westwood was an original in so many ways — her character, her spirit and her design. But she was also a stickler…