Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (150th Anniversary Edition with Dame Vivienne Westwood)

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In the book, the King of Hearts tells us: “Begin at the beginning . . . and go on till you come to the end, then stop.” Over time Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has taken on a number of different interpretations. Author of Alice’s Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture, Professor Will Brooker, describes how “In the 1930s it was psychoanalysis, in the 1960s it was psychedelia, and in the 1990s paedophilia”. Dame Vivienne Westwood, the trailblazing British fashion designer who brought punk and politics to the rarefied world of high fashion, has died on December 29, aged 81. She passed away peacefully and surrounded by her family in Clapham, South London, a representative for Westwood confirmed. I recently interviewed her oldest son, Ben, who is a pornographer. He has recently been campaigning against the government's plan to criminalise the possession of extreme pornography. What does she make of his career choice? "It's such a cliche, that pin-up styling," she says. "I think it's boring because of that. Otherwise, I think it's fine. But I think he should make the women look more glamorous, more interesting. But then it probably wouldn't be porn if the women looked too strong."

The main enemy, she says, is non-stop distraction, by which she means television, the cinema, the internet, adverts, the press and fashion magazines. "If people are not thinking then we really don't have any future," she says. "We live in this terrible, terrible danger because everyone is not thinking." We remedy this, as far as I can tell, from reading lots of books and appreciating art and culture. "My manifesto is saying, essentially, every time you learn something, you see something you understand, you are helping to change the world and you are a freedom fighter. Even if it just means looking a word up in the dictionary you didn't know before." Westwood has a well-documented history in activism, notably her recent campaigning against climate change. Yet these documents feel strangely placed in the introduction to a book like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So what is Westwood’s thinking here? It seems fitting, then, that Westwood’s view of Wonderland’s “adult logic” is that it is entirely illogical. Alice has long been a touchstone for fashion, too. Vivienne Westwood, Zac Posen, Viktor & Rolf, and John Galliano have all sent looks down the runway inspired by Caroll's characters and Tenniel's drawings, while the transformative, otherworldly possibilities of Wonderland hold appeal for fashion shoots. Great art should make you think, ‘My god, how did anybody do that?’ It’s incredible what human beings can do. Absorb the illusion of reality.”—Vivienne Westwood, 1941-2022Carroll published several other nonsense works, including The Hunting of the Snark (1876), Sylvie and Bruno (1889), and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893). He also wrote a number of pamphlets poking fun at university affairs, which appeared under a fake name or without any name at all, and he composed several works on mathematics under his true name. In 1881 Carroll gave up his lecturing to devote all of his time to writing.

I'm not interested in talking about little anecdotes about things that have happened to me," she says, not unkindly. I suppose her past has been gone over so much that it is threadbare. Westwood grew up in the Pennine village of Tintwistle, where her father worked in the Wall's sausage factory and her mother was an assistant at the local greengrocers. After art college, Vivienne Swire married Derek Westwood, a factory apprentice, and their son Ben was born. The marriage didn't last, and when Westwood met Malcolm McLaren, she fell pregnant with her second son, Joe, almost immediately. The Alice we expect today may have had the Hollywood treatment along the way, then, but one of the most striking things about the characters of Wonderland is how very easily they morph and bend to an artist's vision, while still remaining recognisable. Scieszka’s retelling substantially alters and abridges the film and the original books. Both Carroll’s and Disney’s versions allude to Isaac Watts’ poem "Against Idleness and Mischief." In each version, however, the poem is changed from “how doth the little busy bee” to “how doth the little crocodile,” replacing the original text with incorrect verses. This allusion was removed from Scieszka’s version, a clear example of the changing times, since children no longer memorize Watts’ poems during their early education as they once did. This 2016 version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is inspired by the original text’s Mad Tea Party chapter, which features the March Hare and the Mad Hatter. In this edition, aspects of both characters have been modernized for the child reader. In the original, the Mad Hatter misuses words and turns the “normal” into the extraordinary. He is fantastical, and his tea party displays his personal eccentricities and Wonderland’s magic. The March Hare in Carroll’s text is both bizarre and exciting. He flirts with the line between the human and the animal: even though he is a rabbit, he speaks, wears a shirt, tells time, and sits upright. He thus eludes easy categorization.Born in Tintwistle, Derbyshire on 8 April, 1941, the doyenne of British fashion, Dame Vivienne Westwood (Vivienne Isabel Swire) forayed into the world of design in the early 1970s, after working as a primary school teacher and making her own jewellery that she would sell at local stalls. A voracious reader and an enthusiastic creator, she stitched together her bridal dress for her first marriage to Derek Westwood, before meeting Malcolm McLaren (musician, impresario, and singer-songwriter who also promoted and managed the band, ‘Sex Pistols’ and ‘New York Dolls’). One of the messages of her last collection was "don't buy clothes" and she rails against consumerism, strange for a fashion designer who produces several collections a year, for an industry that is nothing if not about consumers. "You might think that's really disingenuous of me, but I'm serious," she says. "I'm not here to defend [being a fashion designer], it's something I do. Kronthaler is 25 years her junior and she has often spoken of how he goes off on holiday without her ("I hate to travel"). It is perhaps mean to even suggest it, but does she ever worry he will leave her? "No, I don't. But it's difficult to say that and one doesn't want to sound complacent. I know he's committed to me. We support each other, intellectually and in all kinds of ways." These original characters have been adapted for present day accessibility. Puybaret simplifies the Mad Hatter’s inclination toward wordplay through the conspicuous word “YUM” and the Hatter’s “strange giggles” about the concept of nothingness. The language of the original Tea Party is abstract, complex, and filled with puns, but this version offers the same ideas with brevity and childlike visuals. The exhibition aims to immerse visitors into the world of Alice around every turn, including a “mind-bending” game of croquet in virtual reality. Visitors emerge into the Queen of Hearts’ croquet ground to pit their wits in ‘A Curious Game of Croquet’.

There was a sense of 'is this book just for children or is it for adults?'" says Bailey. "Going with the illustrator from Punch and the appeal to the adult audience was obviously partly in Carroll's mind. It was very strategic." The book has such a phenomenal number of ideas and concepts in it, but it creates space for the creativity too," says Bailey. "It really is this Bible for the imagination." I was hoping to see Westwood's third husband, Andreas Kronthaler, but he isn't in the studio. Westwood met him when she was teaching a class in Vienna and he was one of her students and they married in 1992. "It's amazing, it's incredible," she says of their relationship. "I feel so sure about it. He's so supportive and we're just so interested in each other. He's an amazing person." The exhibition finale allows visitors to step “through the looking glass” with an immersive digital art installation inspired by the text and imagery within the Alice stories. Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson on January 27, 1832, the eldest son and third of eleven children born to Frances Jane Lutwidge and the Reverend Charles Dodgson. Carroll had a happy childhood. His mother was patient and gentle, and his father, despite his religious duties, tutored all his children and raised them to be good people. Carroll frequently made up games and wrote stories and poems, some of which were similar to his later published works, for his seven sisters and three brothers.Unlike most of the children's books of the day, Alice and through the Looking Glass did not attempt to convey obvious moral lessons. Nor did they contain what critics have tried to insist are there—hidden meanings relating to religion or politics. They are delightful adventure stories in which a normal, healthy, clearheaded little girl reacts to the "reality" of the adult world. Their appeal to adults as well as to children lies in Alice's intelligent response to ridiculous language and action. Westwood’s runway has long been her political platform. T-shirts in her spring 2006 collection read “I Am Not A Terrorist, Please Don’t Arrest Me,” while models in her fall 2008 show carried signs demanding fair legal trials for Guantánamo Bay prisoners. A banner in the spring 2013 show called for a climate revolution. Other times she has shown support for U.S. whistleblower Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as well as political parties, environmental charities including Cool Earth and Greenpeace, and the Occupy demonstrations in 2011. Despite the original stories' reliance on wordplay, puns, and nonsense, Alice has become such an icon that she is often used as a touchstone even within primarily visual media. When Christopher Wheeldon first suggested a ballet version, his designer Bob Crowley reportedly thought he was "completely insane" to make a wordless Wonderland. But the Royal Ballet's 2011 show was a huge hit – not least because of Crowley's designs, which combined familiar Alice shorthands with classical tutus and cutting-edge stagecraft, from op-art projections to a multi-part Cheshire cat puppet. The Queen of Hearts stepped out of an intimidatingly huge crinoline-cum-throne-cum-tank, to dance a parody of a sequence from the ballet Sleeping Beauty: both very Lewis Carroll, and very ballet. Another speech follows - and I'm not sure how we got on to this - about how she doesn't think science is the answer to everything because it doesn't take account of human nature and what makes us happy. She says: "Sorry if I take rather a long time to explain things," then: "Hang on a minute," when I interrupt. She steamrollers over me, talking slightly faster and louder, sometimes putting her head in her hands, as if nothing will stop her getting her point out. She has a lot to say. On the destruction of the planet: "We have to save the rainforest or else we've got no chance. Can you imagine the war lords, and the rape and pillage, and the mass migrations and the hunger? The human race has looked never before on the apocalypse and I do believe that is what we're facing."