Vivienne Westwood’s Alice ballerina shoe channels festive rebellion
The house unveils its 2026 holiday campaign through the eyes of twelve collaborators, beginning with Alexa Sonsino's vision of creative freedom. The Alice ballerina, rendered in cardinal red, carries the anatomical precision of Westwood's signature Animal Toe.
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Vivienne Westwood’s Alice ballerina shoe emerges this season in a vivid arterial red, its form suspended within an ornate silver platter like a gem of rebellion captured mid flight. The shoe’s anatomical silhouette carries the house’s signature Animal Toe motif, a lineage traced back to the Spring Summer 2000 Summertime collection, when the founder’s irreverent sensibility first bent footwear toward sculptural defiance.
The 2026 festive campaign, titled Twelve Days of Westwood, unfolds as a gallery of creative voices rather than a single directive. Photographer and artist Alexa Sonsino frames the opening statement: ‘A spark of freedom, a little rebellion, and the joy of being unconventional.’ Her framing, aided by set designer Raphaëlle Daguerre’s theatrical presentation, elevates the shoe beyond seasonal merchandise into something closer to manifesto.
The Alice ballerina carries a buckled ankle strap and a delicate bow at the vamp, its glossy patent finish catching light with an almost liquid intensity. Pale crushed ice surrounds it in the platter, a collision of the balletic and the brutalist, the precious and the provocative. Over the weeks ahead, eleven further collaborators will offer their own meditations on the season through Westwood’s collections, each one a small act of creative defiance.
Imagery courtesy of Vivienne Westwood (@viviennewestwood).