Barely into the hottest season of the year, the British fashion house Vivienne Westwood has decided to unveil its Fall/Winter 2024 campaign a little ahead of the rest.

In the images photographed by William Waterworth, the models can be seen in the British countryside wearing the next season’s pieces, inspired by the 19th-century imperial style that predominates in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Wether. As a curiosity, this work was once a gift from the brand’s current creative director, Andreas Kronthaler, to Vivienne herself.

The launch is accompanied by a quote from the grand dame Westwood, which reads: “Andreas bought me Goethe’s ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ (Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774). It was the first tragic novel, and it caused a sensation – and was one of the factors which led to the Romantic movement. Napoleon took ‘Werther’ on his Egyptian campaign in 1798 – and when he met Goethe in 1808, he told him that he had read the book seven times – he decorated him. It is still a model of literature in the education curriculum across Europe”.

Check out images from the Vivienne Westwood Fall/Winter 2024 campaign below: