Artist Uniform: How Vivienne Westwood's Orb Outlived Punk

In Artist Uniform, a column for Highsnobiety, Chris Erik Thomas traces how personal style shapes an artist's identity.Besides, perhaps, Camilla Parker Bowles, it’s difficult to imagine anyone daydreaming about Charles III and having something good come of it. The current King of England simply doesn’t exude creative inspiration, so much as a signature pasty Britishness.And yet, it’s King Charles himself who must be credited with inspiring one of British fashion’s most prevailing emblems: the Vivienne Westwood Orb. You read that right. One of fashion’s foremost anti-establishment symbols traces back to a man who reigns atop a literal institutional monarchy. That’s the magic of fashion, baby. Allow me to set the scene: In the 1970s, Westwood had helped to architect the “punk” look through her iconic King’s Road boutique, while her creative and romantic partner, Malcolm McLaren, had managed key punk bands like The Sex Pistols. By the mid-80s, this punk movement they’d helped shape had splintered (and so, too, had their relationship). She temporarily closed her shop and decamped to Italy to work for Fiorucci. It’s here, as she’s working on a sweater covered in royal insignia she imagined Prince Charles might lounge around in, that Westwood’s iconic Orb is born. Taking the traditional Sovereign’s Orb — the hollow golden sphere topped with a jeweled cross, originally designed for the coronation of King Charles II in 1661 — as its base, she adds a Saturn-like ring around it, inspired by astronomy magazines her son is reading. Your Highsnobiety privacy settings have blocked this Instagram post.It’s this remixed object that becomes her brand’s most endearing logo. While it debuted atop clothing and objects in Westwood’s Fall/Winter 1987 collection, a subversion of notions attached to upper-class “Britishness,” it’s most famous as the archetypal piece of Westwood jewelry. A rebellious riff on the country’s famed Crown Jewels — an arrangement of objects set with priceless gems meant to embody not just status but divine, otherworldly power.Though a generation of young designers such as Vexed Generation and Charles Jeffrey would eventually tap into this same spirit of creative resistance, it was Westwood who served as a guide. Here was a former schoolteacher turned Godmother of Punk, mixing British iconography, an anti-establishment ethos, and 18th-century romanticism into something seamless (and sellable).Your Highsnobiety privacy settings have blocked this Instagram post.“Jewelry is powerful, and it can be loaded with meaning. It marks life, and it gives importance to it,” the brand’s current creative director and Westwood’s former partner, Andreas Kronthaler, has said. Signature pieces like the Three Row Pearl Bas Relief Choker set the Orb against the loaded elitism of pearls, but the house’s collections still reflect the other ways in which Westwood toyed with convention through everything from bondage chains and dog collars to droplet earrings inspired by Elizabethan portraits. She transformed the simple safety pin into a symbol of punk, first through the DIY clothing in her boutique and later through her brand. And her signature Armour ring — four pieces of overlapping silver, like an armadillo’s shell — infused perhaps the simplese piece of jewelry with a protective spirit.Your Highsnobiety privacy settings have blocked this Instagram post.It’s both the breadth of her now-iconic designs and the symbolism imbued within them that form the center of the touring retrospective Vivienne Westwood & Jewelry. Encompassing over 600 pieces of archive and runway jewelry from four decades of her career, the show will make its final stop at the V&A Dundee in Scotland in March 2027. After traveling the world from New Zealand to China to Thailand to Lisbon, Westwood’s distinct flavor of British rebelliousness is finally coming home to answer the question: Is there anything more punk than using jewelry as a tool to subvert Britain’s creaky, antiquated monarchy? Highsnobiety has affiliate marketing partnerships, which means we may receive a commission from your purchase. Want to shop the products our editors actually love? Visit our SHOPPER page and subscribe to the newsletter for recs on all things fashion, footwear, and beauty.