Mr. Kronthaler

Andreas Kronthaler: I recently acquired British citizenship. That was quite a procedure! You have to pass tests, they ask you about the history of the country, and so on. Actually, it was all quite funny, and there was even a chipper welcome ceremony at the end

So where are you from? (laughs) Yes, I’m Tyrolean, and Austrian only in second place. Both are in the heart. For me, Britishness stands for spirit and creativity, for the incredible opportunities this country offers me, for an openness to new things, and for this great interconnectedness with the whole world, which ultimately stems back to the British Empire. 

My mother was an antique dealer, my father a gifted ornamental blacksmith. He ran a workshop with over a dozen employees at our house. I often went down to watch him work. My father was a highly respected craftsman. His customers came to us in the Zillertal from all over Tyrol and even Bavaria. There was an insanely long waiting list for his things. Some people even had to wait several years. A grave cross by him was something very special, you really had to be somebody.

49 percent from my mother and 51 percent from my father. (laughs) To speak of yourself as talented is not my thing. My father was a great guy and a very jovial person, and in a way, sure enough, an artist too. Only after he died, a few years ago, did I realize how much he had influenced me and my work. Art and later goldsmithing was a kind of bridge to fashion for me. It relates to the body, like fashion. 

Always, I always wanted to do fashion. In our attic, the closets were full of clothes, accessories, and textiles from my grandmother and mother, which we children used to put on fashion shows and stage plays, especially in summer. We even pinned up posters in the village, and my parents’ friends would come to our show on Saturday afternoons. They had to pay admission, of course. We even had our own cashier and tickets. From the proceeds, we always went out for ice cream. That was great!

This consumer madness with umpteen collections a year has long since passed its zenith. Sustainability has been a big issue at Vivienne Westwood, already for a long, long time. The label has initiated and tried all sorts of things in this direction. Everything’s been said and done. However, I’m slowly starting to look at the topic differently, more holistically.

Yes, well, that sounds beautiful! It’s about a different kind of awareness, the joy of wearing a piece of clothing, and the aura of fashion. A bit like with food. Some of what we drink and eat may not be one hundred percent healthy, but it makes us happier and perhaps helps us to make the world a bit better, too. It’s about how you view the thing and the garment, how you celebrate it, how you enjoy it, and how you bring it into the world. The traditional definitions of sustainable, unsustainable, unhealthy, healthy don’t add up for me anymore.

I listen to Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Richard Wagner. I love Wagner! Vivienne and I go to a lot of concerts in London. She adopted my passion for classical music. I’m inspired by something on the street, on the radio, a photograph, I cut off a piece of material somewhere, or I draw, I can’t name one specific source. I collect all kinds of things. I have incredible fun in the process, I’m more interested in the journey than the destination. I try out a lot, even if I often come to a dead end. Chance is the best architect. You just have to open yourself to it. That is the secret.

... and in the end your own judgment. I can have a bit of Tyrolean stubbornness. How often have we held on to something, not let ourselves go astray, until it was finally recognized as good – skirts for men, for example.

Sometimes it comes to duels. But very rarely. Vivienne and I work in such opposite ways. She approaches things very differently; she takes one thing and builds it up. I take the whole lot and break it down piece by piece. Unfortunately, my method is often quite laborious and time-consuming.

When I was young, I didn’t care about my roots at all. The older I get, the more I come to terms with them, in a playful and humorous way. For me, it’s not so much the clothes or the costume there that I remember, but rather the approach to food, which inspires my work. I come from a home where food was very important. My grandmothers cooked like goddesses. When I was a boy, I regularly spent a few weeks in the summer with my grandmother on an Alpine pasture. She owned an inn and, man, she could cook! When the blueberries were ripe, I combed the slopes to pick them with the rake. Then she made blueberry patties for me – they were so fluffy, delicious! I had a blue mouth and blue teeth afterwards.

Of course. This incredible effort invested for a good meal in my childhood days! How precisely my mother cut the potatoes! This reverence and sensuality, almost erotic relationship with food. What else is the function of food, clothing, and fashion? That you get full and don’t get cold – but in the end, it’s about indulgence, about getting to know each other, about appeal, about sex, eroticism, and sensuality.

Always. Nobody in the village cared. In the Zillertal, people weren’t as small-minded as one might think, perhaps it’s because of all the tourists.

A great religion teacher in Tyrol told me about this school. This step was the first big change in my life and broadened my horizons. There I could try out all sorts of artistic practices: ceramics, goldsmithing, painting, and so on. And an old aunt of mine lived in Graz – she has unfortunately passed away – whose wardrobe I modified.

Yeah, sure, I lived on that for years. I went at her fur coats kamikaze style. I could design whatever I liked for her.

My aunt found them great; they were really wild creations but never good enough for my mother. In Tyrol, people used to have most of their wardrobe custom-made by a seamstress. On Saturday afternoons, my mother would go to fittings. One seamstress was specialized in everyday clothes, another in festive costumes. For jackets and sweaters, there was even a knitter. The fabrics were usually purchased in town, and an incredible amount of time was spent on clothing.

My mother often wore dirndls. Traditional costume can be chic; it depends on who’s wearing it and why. I like black leather pants with a T-shirt on me.

Vivienne herself grew up on the countryside in northern England, her father was a dog breeder. She meets everyone in Tyrol with incredible interest. She has an amazing connection to animals and nature. My family – my brother is a mountain farmer – really appreciates that about her. For decades now, we’ve been going to the mountains in Austria, where I restored my grandmother’s old farm house from the 15^th century. If I had known what a grind it would be, I might not have done it. Now all that’s missing is the baroque chapel. 

I think she likes my shoulders cause she often leans on them. (laughs) She says she’s inspired by how I look at things. And I can only return that. She has such vast knowledge, she can sing thousands of songs by heart, recite countless poems and pages and pages of Shakespeare. Quite the opposite of me!

Love! And I think everyone has a right to time and freedom to do what they want to. Life should be a joy. And above all, easy to live!

This interview is published in the print edition 5/2022 "The Province Issue". You can order it here in out shop.

Andreas Kronthaler was born in 1966 in Fügen, Tyrol. A trained goldsmith, he went on to study industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he met Vivienne Westwood, whom he married in 1992. Westwood said her husband is the most talented person she has ever met. The two lived and worked in London together for 30 years.