A room that’s still and let details do all the talk, indeed, all the whispering. That’s the field Westwood’s men’s jewellery collection wants to occupy permanently. No posing, no shouting, just fashion items that seem to carry quiet charge. Gutta cavat lapidem, Ancient Romans would say. Talismanic, for sure, but still grounded, sharpened by restraint, and unbothered by the actual loud and meaningless fashion styles we have to face all around.
The items of the latest collection by Vivienne Westwood feel inherited from older stories, the meaningful ones, the ones no one ever thought would play such a central role in our frequently-too-updated world.
With her latest collection of men’s jewellery, Vivienne draws something authentic in a world of copycats. A homage to nobody, with no due respect to dull copycats dominating (or, indeed, willing to dominate) such a special space of men’s accessories.
And it’s definitely not about perfection. Surfaces refuse high polish. Models and forms keep a trace of the hand that made them, a log of what and who shaped them into their final form. You definitely get that feeling of someone crafting these pieces with a kind of stubborn precision, a care never ending in industrial (and boring) absence of discrepancy.
Let them work at their own pace and do not force for them a presence on the main stage. Your favorite pendant can lay flat, almost going unnoticed. A ring can catch light and hold a thought longer than you would expect, for fashion items wanting to be felt eventually, not to dominate the scene, but to make it truly yours.
There are seriously no scripts for these. No manuals. No seasonal tricks. You put one on, and something locks into place. Something feels just about right. Not like a modern armour, but like accents you can add to your own poem. A comma in the rhymes of your morning. A full stop in a conversation you need to end. Never altering who you truly are but distilling it in the purest form. Clearer. More focused.
With time, they will surely become part of your daily. Something in the weight, in the clasp, in the feel of the metal settling against the skin. Not out of habit, but because everything would feel unfinished without your favourite ones. Not just symbolic, not just decorative. Just right.
Even their refusal to sparkle like traditional jewellery feels just right, deliberate, of those who refuse to surrender who they are simply to fit in. No need for unnecessary, shouting shine here. Whispering presence. Texture. Weight. Shapes. Such items can interact with fabric and flesh alike, never just to impress, but to inhabit together the realm of your style and your true self.
There’s something undeniably modern in that kind of attitude, even if not a single piece in Vivienne Westwood’s latest collection suffers the modern malaise of trying to stay relentlessly up to date. There is, along the whole collection, a kind of sartorial noncompliance that feels truly radical, especially in an era when loudness is mistaken for confidence. Westwood knew that rebellion doesn’t always wear spikes, it sometimes comes quietly, in a perfectly weighted piece of metal resting just so beneath a shirt collar. And even when it decides to wear spike and chains, refinement is not an option.
And that’s the point. Gutta cavat lapidem. The drop carves the stone. Not by force. By persistence. By presence. By simply showing up, again and again, until the shape of things has shifted, and you with it.
About the Author
