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THE AMSTERDAM CHAINSAW MASSACRE IN A SEASON WHEN FASHION HOUSES ARE PLAYING IT SAFE, MAVERICK DESIGNERS VIKTOR & ROLF TOOK ON THE CREDIT TO CRUNCH WITH THEIR THRILLINGLY IMPRACTICAL MUTILATION OF TULLE PHOTOGRAPHY JOSH OLINS TEXT AND STYLING KATIE SHILLINFORD Before the New York D.J. duo AndrewAndrew, before the saucy twins Dean and Dan Caten of Dsquared2, before the über-bear dressmakers Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra of Costello Tagliapietra had us seeing double, there was Viktor & Rolf, brainchild of the lookalike Dutch designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren. Not since Gilbert & George began blowing British gallery-goers’ minds with their collaborative side-by-side self-portraits have two creative minds been so successfully linked, not just to each other, but to the work they produce. Part performance-art group, part couture house, Viktor & Rolf blurs boundaries by tapping into Holland’s distinct aesthetic heritage, from austere Golden Age portraiture to De Stijl functionalism. Looking beyond the low country, they mine inspirations from fashion’s experimentalist old guard (Elsa Schiaparelli, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent) and avant-garde (Kansai Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto). Fresh from the atelier of the Netherlands’ prestigious Arnhem Academy of Art and Design, Viktor & Rolf took Paris by storm in 1993. Their reconstructed ball gowns scooped up top prizes at the Salon Européen des Jeunes Stylistes, a well-known fashion festival where many of Europe’s young talents are discovered. Forging ahead with their architectonic renderings that
rethink even the basic white shirt, these highly inventive wunderkinder became regulars on the French circuit, popping up at one Marais gallery with a laundry line of gilt pieces hanging from invisible thread.
“THE FACT THAT THERE IS A CRISIS IS NOT A REASON TO STOP CREATING BEAUTIFUL EXTREME THINGS”
By 1997, Viktor & Rolf was a fully fledged business endeavor, with the label’s voluminous creations shown during Paris couture week. By 1998, the name had crossed the Atlantic to New York, where industry vets at Vogue touted these interesting, elusive young fellows as ones to watch. Soon, Viktor & Rolf runway shows became one of the hottest tickets in town. The presentations became increasingly theatrical (as in 1999, when they intensified the whites of viewers’ teeth by saturating a room with ultraviolet light).
wear line; then with the popular, L’Oréal-backed fragrance Flowerbomb in 2005; and then with a hugely successful H&M pairing in 2006.
“It makes me believe in Oprah. Oprah always says, ‘Everything begins with a thought—and you can realize your own dreams.’ ”
Sincerity is what saves editors and buyers from determining that the Viktor & Rolf joke is on us. Fantasy and make-believe are what drive Horsting and Snoering—two suburban boys who came of age in what they have regularly referred to as an unstylish and uniform northern European society. Snoeren, describing Viktor & Rolf’s success to Vogue, said it best in 1999:
Perhaps, the beauty of Viktor and Rolf’s new collection stands as more than just a non objective mumble of attractiveness. Perhaps the meaning is as abysmal as the layers and layers of candy colored tulle which was subsequently hacked into with a power saw to create negative space and in turn- create form. It’s the cut; the cut of the economy, the literal cut made directly into the voluminous tulle dress, the cut away from reality and back into fashion. Fashion as art - fashion without strings attached. Fashion by Viktor & Rolf. Conception and execution perfectly melted together to form a warm and welcoming sauce of the unknown.
“IT’S NATURAL TO LOOK FOR WAYS TO TURN A SHOW INTO SOMETHING MORE OF AN EXPERIENCE” – VIKTOR & ROLF
I love a collection with a story or a statement, and Viktor and Rolf don’t seize to surprise me with every show. You would think that because there is an economical crisis they would go back to their basic roots, with safe expenses, tone down the couture and keep it quite commercial, well hell no! They have never done it and they weren’t going to start now, well in theory, in practice they did, by choping down the gowns and actually ‘cutting back’, biting through. Hurray for them, for throwing us a show (pregnant Róisín Murphy including) showing us that there is hope in surviving this crisis and there are different solution and way to embrace it.
While headline-grabbing performances kept the label in the news, some critics started to say that the carefully masterminded public image of its interview-shy designers—who were becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish—had overshadowed the clothes. Other commentators, observing all the oddball silhouettes and visual gags, wrote Horsting and Snoering off as a pair of anti-fashion pranksters. As personalitydriven branding dominated millennial fashion (Tom Ford’s seventies sex at Gucci; Donatella’s bronzé beach glamour at Versace), a Viktor & Rolf blouse seemed less interesting than the latest word on the twee hipsters who had designed it. This was a brand that had mounted almost as many museum and gallery exhibits as runway shows. And so to move forward meant to move mainstream—first by ditching couture altogether in 2000 and launching a ready-to-
Reflecting upon themselves and their own wardrobe, Horsting and Snoeren turn the drama down a notch for their menswear premiere, in which models are styled in the designers’ own bespectacled likeness. The duo toast Fashion’s Night Out with champagne while tucked under the covers of an oversize bed at Saks Fifth Avenue, in New York.
“JUST A TOUCH OF SURREAL & THEY HAVE
MODERNIZED SURREALISM IN A WHOLE
NEW LEVEL.”