‘She broke the rules, fearlessly’: exhibition explores Vivienne Westwood’s revolutionary work

Peter Smithson’s wife, Belise, has never minded when he receives a corset from Japan or a pair of fur-trimmed knickers and they are not for her.

“No, she’s never seen it as strange,” said Smithson, a chemistry teacher and Vivienne Westwood supercollector. “She has never judged it. She gets it. She knows it is part and parcel of who I am.”

Smithson is speaking at a preview of a major fashion exhibition that draws almost entirely upon his incredible private collection, built up over 30 years.

There are more than 40 ensembles from his collection on display at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham. The gallery spaces are a blizzard of tartan tweed, dazzling harlequin print, faux-fur coats, oversized velvet crowns and mirrored fig-leaf tights, which Smithson acknowledges would not be everyone’s choice for a night out.

A pair of ‘Seditionary’ boots, on loan from Jill Bryant Smith. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

“I imagine it’s fairly limited who’s going to buy and wear one,” he said. “But it’s about fun. She comes up with an idea and it is about producing something that she enjoys.”

Also on display are accessories, shoes, jewellery and other Westwood ephemera from Smithson’s collection – displayed to tell stories, alongside treasures from the Bowes’ own extensive holdings.

Smithson was brought up in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, and remembers gazing out of the car window as a young boy and admiring people with strong looks.

As a 10-year-old, he watched Westwood being interviewed by Sue Lawley on Wogan and remembers being confused by the howls of laughter from the audience as they saw her designs on the models.

It was car crash television. “I couldn’t understand why Sue Lawley and the audience were lampooning her. I was looking at the models thinking they were just fantastic looks.”

Further exhibits from the Vivienne Westwood: Rebel – Storyteller – Visionary exhibition, including a Harris tweed jacket, bloomer trousers with sheepskin trim and a hat and muff. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

His eureka moment came when as a teenager he went clothes shopping in Manchester and stumbled upon a shop. “This guy came out wearing a metropolitan tartan suit with the tartan bondage trousers,” Smithson said.

“Again, it was the expression on his face, that joy, that confidence. I looked at him, and I looked at the shop he’d come out of, and I saw the red canopy with the yellow writing. You know, Vivienne Westwood.

“At that moment, I looked at her and thought, it’s Westwood. She’s the one I’ve been admiring all along.”

Derbyshire-born Westwood is remembered as one of “the most daring British designers in British history”, said Vicky Sturrs, the director of programmes and collections at the Bowes Museum.

Also on display are accessories, shoes, jewellery and other Westwood ephemera. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

Westwood moved to London when she was 17 but, Sturrs said, “never lost her northern roots, and her fearless creativity still resonates powerfully with this region”.

Rachel Whitworth, the fashion and textiles curator at the museum, said Westwood’s designs were revolutionary not just in their appearance, but in the way they were constructed. “She broke the rules of design, experimenting fearlessly with technique, proportion and historical reference. She drew from the past, created for the present and remained sharply conscious of the future.”

Smithson met Westwood on a number of occasions and she lived up to his expectations. “She was very welcoming, very humble, completely down to earth,” he said. “I think she absolutely despised the global superstardom that surrounded her.”

Smithson is the father of two boys, six and nine, who may end up sharing his passion for fashion. “My nine-year-old already has a very good eye for it,” he said.

Westwood aficionado Smithson at the exhibition. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

He said collecting Westwood had given him a “lifetime of pleasure” and that it was wonderful to see his objects being enjoyed by other people. He hopes the exhibition, which also has loans from other private collections, Manchester Art Gallery and Fashion Musuem Bath, will inspire the next generation of fashion designers.

Smithson, wearing a classy Westwood denim jacket from his days of partying in Manchester – “I very rarely wear it these days,” he said – often gets asked why, as a straight, married teacher who wears boring shirt-and-tie clothes in the classroom, he is obsessed with Westwood and her work.

“The answer is that I just felt a connection to her and her clothes from a very early age. When I saw her on Wogan, I looked at the models and they were just high on life … I wanted to experience that.”

• Vivienne Westwood: Rebel – Storyteller – Visionary is at the Bowes Museum from 28 March to 6 September.