Description

The Watch: Vivienne Westwood Orb II Blue Ladies’ Watch

This Vivienne Westwood Orb II Blue Ladies’ Watch (VV006RSBL) features a prominent Vivienne Westwood orb on the silver tone dial beautifully accented by gold tone detailing, PVD rose gold-plated stainless steel case a blue orb charm and matching textured leather strap.

Key Features:

• Swiss Quartz Movement
• Water Resistant 50 metres
• PVD rose plating
• Strap Buckle
• Orb Dangle feature

The Family: Orb

The Vivienne Westwood Orb family takes its name from the addition of a signature Vivienne Westwood orb charm to the left-hand side of the dial casing, ensuring the watches in this collection are unmistakably a product of one of the greatest modern fashion minds.

The Brand: Vivienne Westwood

Punk pioneer Vivienne Westwood has been making the fashion world sit up and take notice for decades. Uninspired by the hippie movement that swept through global culture and fashion in the 1960s, Westwood was instead more interested in rebellion and found the inspiration to express this in 1950s clothing, music and memorabilia. Shortly after meeting and then making Teddy Boy style clothes for Malcolm McLaren, the pair opened the first ever Vivienne Westwood shop on London’s Kings Road in 1971. Originally called Let it Rock, the store was later controversially renamed to SEX following Westwood and McLaren’s prosecution for obscenity in 1974, and stocked a wide variety of fetish wear and never before seen approaches to style that attracted everyone from Chrissie Hynde to Iggy Pop, Adam Ant, Jerry Hall and Charles Saatchi. It was from this shop that McLaren, who was also Westwood’s lover at the time, gave birth to the Sex Pistols, whose release of the highly controversial single “God Save the Queen” combined with their brash personas made them the perfect mouthpiece for Britain’s disenchanted youth. Completely banned by the BBC due to its lyrical content, “God Save the Queen” went to number one in 1976, and in the same year SEX was reopened as Seditionaires, transforming the straps and zips of obscure sexual fetishism in fashion and inspiring a D.I.Y. aesthetic. This lifestyle and personal aesthetic revolution became to be known as Punk Rock. But the Sex Pistols tenure was short lived, and the combination of their break-up and Punk’s absorption into the mainstream left Westwood disenchanted; she renamed the shop Worlds End in 1980 as a result, and it has been called that ever since. McLaren and Westwood’s first catwalk show, the Pirate Collection, debuted the year after, beginning a tradition that continues to the present day and has resulted in Vivienne Westwood evolving from Punk to global fashion house. 1991 saw Westwood named as British Designer of the Year and in 2007 she picked up the prestigious Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design award at the British Fashion Awards. Social activism and the campaign for a better, fairer world, has still, however, always remained a part of Vivienne Westwood’s personal and fashion ethos, and in 2011, as part of her Ethical Fashion Africa collection, she enlisted thousands of local women to produce a range of bags in return for a fair wage. Controversy is also still as much as feature of Vivienne’s operations as it was in the early days. In 2003 she sent a series of male models down the catwalk wearing fake breasts and she sparked outrage in 2012 when she created a t-shirt supporting the highly divisive political figure Julian Assange. This attitude of difference and non-compliance was translated to the world of wristwear in 1993 following the introduction of the revolutionary Orb watch. Flourishing with innovation and devotion, Vivienne Westwood timepieces were unlike anything that had ever been seen before, featuring subjects such as nautical pirates and classic effervescent works of art and constructed from a diverse and bold range of materials. No longer was a watch simply a timekeeping tool; it was now a bona fide fashion accessory. Fast-forward to the present day and this ethos is still at the heart of every Vivienne Westwood timepiece, with the present range of offerings taking inspiration from every phase in Vivienne’s storied design history.