This season Vivienne Westwood opted not to show this second line with all the accompanying brouhaha a Westwood show entails, but to instead let the clothes do the talking. For the Vivienne Westwood Spring 2020 RTW collection was inspired by the stand-up theater of Italy’s commedia dell’arte as well as the also Italian, but more recent, character of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi’s lying puppet.

Some really interesting dresses in shirting cotton were made in fractured shards of paneling that recalled broken glass. A construction system termed “cocoon” saw more panels of shirting fabric, this time organically circular and shirred at the seam, interconnected to make suggestively oversize collage garments that added cup size and bolstered hip and fairly winked a come-hither hello at you from the mannequin. Also entertaining was the so-called drunken tartan pieces for both genders that took that venerable Scottish pattern but gave it the woozy skew-whiff aspect of a one Scotch too many. Another wantable were the updated “alien” pants with a drooping waistline saved by an internal corseted cinch at the navel.

Vivienne Westwood’s rhetoric can be added to the extent that it pollutes the message she is so dedicated to spreading, there is no question that when it comes to production, she practices what she preaches.