Dame Vivienne Westwood’s husband put on a solemn display as he attended the star-studded memorial for the late designer.
In tribute to the godmother of punk, who passed away peacefully in December, aged 81, many A-listers wore classic Westwood designs, or injected bursts of colour, tartan or patterns with flamboyant outfits at the service in London yesterday.
Alongside celebrity guests such as Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham and Stormzy, Dame Vivienne’s widower Andreas Kronthaler, 57, cut a sombre figure in a grey and burgundy scarf-like jacket when stepping out at Southwark Cathedral.
Andreas, Dame Vivienne’s third husband, and 25 years her junior, met the fashion designer at the Vienna School of Applied Arts where she was a 47-year-old professor and he was a student, aged 23.
Dame Vivienne spoke in the past how their professional partnership worked because her calmness balanced his ‘hysteria’, while she was happy for bisexual Kronthaler to have ‘total freedom’ in their marriage.
Dame Vivienne Westwood’s husband put on a solemn display as he attended the star-studded memorial for the late designer
Following news of her death, he wrote: ‘I will continue with Vivienne in my heart. We have been working until the end and she has given me plenty of things to get on with. Thank you darling.’
Andreas himself is Austrian – born in 1966 in Tyrol and the son of a blacksmith. In 1980, he attended art school in Graz, Austria, where he spent five years training to be a jeweller.
But during this time, he also began to experiment with fashion, making clothes at home to be sold to friends and in local stores.
He studied Industrial Design at the Vienna School of Applied Art and switched to fashion design, where he met Dame Vivienne.
At the time, Andreas was just 23-years-old, while she was 47 and teaching three days a week. But there was clearly something about him that piqued her attention.
Dame Vivienne later told the Guardian, ‘It’s very difficult to find a…
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