News And Projects

An Evening of Poetry

10/05/2024 — Vivienne Westwood

To celebrate the launch of our new collection, we have partnered with local artists across Paris, Milan and the UK – to host a series of private poetry evenings at our boutiques. Following the narrative behind our Spring-Summer 2024 collection, guest poets performed excerpts from Shakespeare's poems, or original pieces echoing the themes from Sonnet 18 – evoking an everlasting beauty; a memory that lives on and inspires the future:

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. ”

'Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?' by William Shakespeare

In London, we collaborated with James Massiah and poets from Adult entertainment – who performed poems relating to their sensibilities for nature, a search for beauty in everyday moments, or the purity of an ever-enduring love. Across the UK, poetry evenings were also hosted in Glasgow, Nottingham, Leeds, Manchester and Cardiff, in partnership with local theatres and artists. Other events included a private poetry evening hosted at our Paris boutique, where a replication of a 'paper theatre' was designed for our window displays. The artwork was created by Parisian artist Rachelle Cunningham, who emulated the traditional decor of British theatres. In Milan, poetry was recited by students from the Scuola del Teatro Musicale, who were accompanied by a live guitar performance.