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Viktor & Rolf, 30 years of fashion and rebellion: "You can't always be on top"

2022-06-20T22:17:22.352Z


From misunderstanding to applause and from the minority market to commercial success, the Dutch design duo reviews three decades of history and irreverent garments.


Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren don't read reviews of their shows.

"The bad ones are right and the good ones are not," they joke.

“We decided to stop reading them a while ago because they don't help us.

There is always a nationalist point in which more importance is given to French and English designers, and we are Dutch”, they say.

"Also, we can't take it for granted that everyone who attends our shows knows we've been at this for 30 years."

Three decades in this sector, which sees the birth and death of author brands almost every year, is a feat.

“We have learned that you cannot always be on top, there are better collections and others worse, and you live more calmly when you assume it”, they confess.

This time it has not been Paris but Barcelona the enclave chosen to hold its first bridal fashion show, which, along with new designs, has reviewed some of the most important of its Mariage line, active since 2017, although they have been carrying out more than a decade custom orders.

"This is the Paris of brides," they say, referring to the fashion week dedicated to the sector that is held annually in the city, and in which specialized firms from all over the world show their creations.

Although within this area their greatest milestone was dressing Princess Mabel of the Netherlands in 2004, what made them start designing wedding dresses was the wedding of their manager, "one of the first after equal marriage was legalized in the Netherlands, in 2001. The two were dressed the same”.

Her first mediatic wedding dress is from 2004. It is a piece full of bows for Princess Mabel of Orange Nassau. Caterina Barjau

Viktor & Rolf started their Mariage line almost fifteen years ago.

In the image, she mixed archive dresses with new designs.

Catherine Barjau

Viktor& Rolf wedding dress in Barcelona, ​​May 2022. Caterina Barjau

Some of the accessories used in the parade, the first that the firm has made focused solely on bridal fashion.

Catherine Barjau

Her approach to bridal design is "very similar to that of any haute couture dress", something that in her case translates into sculptural games of proportions and elements, such as bows or rhinestones that, based on being repeated in the garment, border on irony.

“Although there is an important difference, and that is that in a single dress you have to explain everything.

In addition, it has to be able to be carried”, they say.

Because, paradoxically enough, Viktor & Rolf have been creating collections for 30 years that are rarely seen on anyone's body, except for a few (and daring) celebrities.

“Our main clientele are the museums, and that makes things a lot easier for us because they are not looking for the latest, they don't care about the temporality of the collections.

Plus, it allows us to do what we want.”

They are not considered artists,

In 1993, fresh out of design school, they made their debut within the framework of the Hyères festival, which brings emerging creators into contact with major brands and from which designers such as Julien Dossena (now at Paco Rabanne) or Anthony Vaccarello (at Saint Laurent).

They took home all three top prizes with a collection that blurred the lines between dress and sculpture.

This conceptual approach led them to start their careers making installations in galleries: a display of golden dresses with large bows suspended from the ceiling, a miniature parade with dolls or a

performance

in which they advertised a perfume that did not smell of anything.

“The beginnings were complicated.

We wanted to carry out our ideas, but very few understood us”, they recall.

In 1998 they managed to parade within the Haute Couture Fashion Week.

“The entire international press came to the second parade.

That was when we felt we could have a future as a brand."

Without their own stores, producing custom pieces and even without external funding, the Dutch duo played the media card, with events designed to make people talk and presenting themselves to the press as a couple of

outsiders

that did not stick to trends or rules.

So alienated from the system that they don't believe in celebrities to publicize their designs, although they both remember fondly the day that Cate Blanchett, who has worn some of their designs, approached them to tell them that she admired their work: “We don't design with anyone in mind .

Time has taught us that if the idea is good, people will come”.

His Haute Couture show for the summer of 2019 was ironic with the culture of the meme. Imaxtree

The fall-winter 2016 collection defied the unwritten rules of haute couture with jeans and patchwork garments. Kristy Sparow (Getty Images)

His last show (summer 2022) is inspired by Nosferatu and all the dresses had structures to raise the shoulders.

imaxtree

Time, and experience: they went from sewing to the much more democratic

prêt à porter

, launched a collection of glasses, a men's line and launched several collaborations.

Some worked, others not so much.

"We have also made sneakers," they joke, "because as a brand you have to do many things that are not you, but what we have designed has only worked for us because we felt like it."

They refer, for example, to their collaboration with H&M in 2006, for which they made a wedding dress that cost 298 euros and which was the seed of their expansion in this sector, and, above all, to Flowerbomb, the fragrance that they devised a year later together with L'Oréal and that even today continues to be a best seller.

"Currently it allows us to finance our ideas, and that we think of it mainly as an artistic project," they acknowledge.

The success was such that Renzo Rosso, owner of the conglomerate OTB (Diesel, Marni,

Margiela…), bought half of the brand in 2008: he is in charge of expanding the firm as a commercial intangible and they continue to do what interests them, which is, basically, to continue practicing a fashion close to the artistic object.

"In fact, if we come to the office with easy sketches, our team gets upset."

The only thing they regret is "that they had not invented social networks before", they comment referring to the spectacle of their

shows

.

The proof is that their

spring 2019 couture

show , in which they emblazoned various tongue-in-cheek messages on pompous tulle gowns, went viral at a time when their fame was not at its peak.

However, the fever of the new generations to nostalgically rescue moments from the past has made Viktor & Rolf once again a reference brand, if not in the closets, then on the Instagram walls of many fashion fans.

“We recently did a shoot for Candy

magazine

with old clothes, and the people of the team, very young, knew what year each one was from.

We freaked out, and so did they, because for them those clothes only existed on their phones.”

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Source: elparis

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