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Homeless chic hits Milan

February 03 2010
Vivienne Westwood‘s latest show raises eyebrows

Men with dishevelled and dusty hair, wheeling shopping trolleys and emerging from cardboard boxes, models treading a catwalk, styled to look like rough sleepers: this was the scene at Vivienne Westwood's latest fashion show for Milan Fashion Week.

Coined "homeless chic" by one magazine editor, who described it as "a little close to the bone", the theme, apparently inspired by a friend of Westwood's who works for a homelessness charity, has raised a few eyebrows in and out of the fashion world.

And sensitivity seemed to be the order of the evening according to The Times. It said: "It was not the only delicate subject to be broached. One of Westwood's models wore an orange boiler suit - a touch of Guantánamo chic, perhaps."

When questioned, Westwood admitted that she herself had no experience of being homeless, says The Times. "The nearest I have come to it is going home and finding I don't have my door key," she said. "I mean, what a disaster that is, dying to get in your house and you can't. And what if it wasn't there any more?"

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