Bangkok's Central ChidlWorld is hosting the first-ever showing of the "Vivienne Westwood & Jewellery Exhibition" in Thailand, an eight-room walkthrough of more than 600 pieces of runway jewellery plus a special archive collection. Curated by the Westwood team and Andreas Kronthaler — the designer's Austrian husband and creative director — and presented with Madame Tussauds, it runs at Event Hall on the 2nd floor until 23 October. Tickets are 200 THB.

The exhibition is organised into eight themed rooms: Origins, Parure, Wonderland, Do It Yourself, Exploration, The Orb, Misalliance and The Galaxy. The Origins room starts with a surprise for many visitors: Westwood actually studied silversmithing at Harrow School of Art in London. Kronthaler trained in goldsmithing back in Austria, so jewellery was in the brand's DNA long before it became a runway staple.

Punk artefacts feature heavily, as you'd expect from a designer who helped define the movement. Look for paper clips, occult charms and even chicken bones once used to stiffen T-shirts — everyday objects turned into symbols that still appear in the jewellery today. The displays also underline her belief that the material itself doesn't matter much: hooks, curtain rings and scrap-market finds were all fair game.

The mannequins wear outfits Westwood owned herself, including a white couture gown printed with sea-monster patterns inspired by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Karak silk dress paired with a corset — a nod to Austrian dress that Westwood wore so often it became one of her signatures. Another room, Parure, reinterprets 18th-century jewellery forms like ribbon bows, hearts and flowers; visitors may be amused to see a paper-mâché tiara, a pointed rebuke to the idea that gems equal value. Wonderland draws on her country home in north England, with pieces incorporating real snail shells and butterfly motifs.

The Orb room explains the brand's Saturn-topped orb logo, created in 1959 as an occult symbol and first worn as jewellery in Harriett Westwood's 1987 tatting collection — a mix of British history and the future. There's also a section on corsets, which Westwood famously modernised and reclaimed as outerwear. Misalliance embraces contradiction, pairing softer feminine pieces with darker industrial ones. The final room, The Galaxy, is a first for Bangkok: an interactive space where you build a digital scrapbook and save up to 40 jewellery designs to your phone as a custom virtual souvenir.

For travellers in Bangkok this autumn, it's a rare chance to see four decades of runway jewellery from one of fashion's most influential figures — activist, punk pioneer and, as her motto went, someone who believed in buying less and choosing well — all under one roof for the price of a decent lunch.