Underpants (Briefs)
Vivienne Westwood's renowned Vive La Cocotte collection was the culmination of her work on the female hourglass silhouette, which she had started a few seasons before. The lightweight metal "bum cage," together with padded busts, defined her historicist pastiche of the female form, which she wanted to appear as in a fashion drawing. Her muse for the show was the seventeenth century woman of letters Ninon de L'Enclos, who wrote "La cocotte vengée" (The Flirt Avenged). Westwood also referred to seventeenth century writer de La Rochefoucauld's phrase "Les femmes ne connaissent pas toute leur coquetterie" (women don't know the full extent of their coquettishness).
Artwork Details
- Title: Underpants (Briefs)
- Design House: Vivienne Westwood (British, founded 1971)
- Designer: Vivienne Westwood (British, 1941–2022)
- Date: fall/winter 1995–96
- Culture: British
- Medium: nylon, cotton, metal
- Credit Line: Purchase, Funds from various donors, by exchange, 2020
- Object Number: 2020.54a, b
- Curatorial Department: The Costume Institute
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1978
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