Kronthaler Shows Westwood Without Westwood

The show arrived at a moment the brand has not yet fully resolved: how to carry a name that was, for decades, inseparable from its owner's physical presence and political noise. Vivienne Westwood died in December 2022, and Kronthaler — her husband and longtime collaborator — has since been the one deciding what the label means season to season.

What is documentable is the structural situation. Kronthaler is not rebranding the house or distancing it from Westwood's legacy; he is continuing to show under her name while making the creative calls alone. That arrangement has its own logic — the name retains commercial and cultural equity that a rebrand would dissolve — but it also means every collection is implicitly asked to answer for an absence.

Whether audiences and buyers are reading these shows as continuations of Westwood's vision, or as Kronthaler's own work delivered under inherited cover, is a question the fashion press has not settled, and probably cannot settle from the outside.

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About the writer

Dua Mifsud Culture, Fashion & Gen Z Editor

Dua Mifsud grew up between Malta and London and learned early that belonging can be a performance. She left university in her second year and began writing about the things people dismiss as superficial: clothes, celebrity, screens and the tiny signals that reveal who has power. Her brother is the only person she trusts without qualification. Dua reads fashion as language and pop culture as evidence. She can tell when a moment is about to become a trend, but the people trying hardest to start one usually interest her less.

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