It’s not just about fashion – it’s the world that’s no laughing matter. An interview with Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren

That the time had come to interview Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren – better known as ‘Viktor&Rolf’, the namesakes of a fashion house best known in the pop world for their most famous and lucrative fragrance, ‘Flowerbomb’ – which is undoubtedly their real asset, given that finding their collections in a boutique is a challenge and, above all, they have nothing to do with their brilliant fashion shows – became clear last June at the presentation of the top graduates from Polimoda in Florence (there are expensive but meritocratic private schools, where students pay tens of thousands of euros, excluding living expenses and accommodation, yet they continue to be regarded as students and not ‘clients’, as I recently heard them described at another of these academies). One of these up-and-coming talents – as will become clear later, not the most brilliant – so one might well wonder why Luke and Lucie Meier, who serve as tutors at this prestigious institution, had chosen to showcase her collection on the catwalk; but in any case, the inspiration for this interview comes from her, so, in any case, thank you; she did indeed send a series of outfits down the catwalk that were, shall we say, heavily inspired by Viktor&Rolf’s famous Spring 2023 show, where each garment floated at a distance from the body, tilted or upside down in relation to the model, defying gravity and subverting the relationship between the clothed and unclothed body. There’s no one who doesn’t remember it, because even to the untrained eye, the collection suggested a visual reflection on what Marxist sociology defines as ‘superstructures’ – a theme also hinted at by the title of the performance, ‘Late Stage Capitalism Waltz’. Those tulle dresses suspended in mid-air, paraded as the model’s doubles and mannequins, are etched into the collective memory, and have contributed to a reflection on the value of clothing in defining contemporary society – a reflection which, we suspect, is not unrelated to its current crisis and the arduous economic fluctuations and faltering recoveries it has been exhibiting in recent weeks. So, on that sweltering Florentine evening in June, amidst a few genuine ideas and many imitations of Demna, Daniel Roseberry for Schiaparelli and, more generally, the ‘best of’ from the last decade (who knows why, but students seem to believe that, after a few seasons, the fashion industry resets its memory to zero and that the line between homage and copy is a laughable matter), Viktor&Rolf’s performance-driven fashion, far removed from the ready-to-wear logic that now dominates fashion weeks almost everywhere, demonstrated its absolute timelessness – and thus one of the reasons why, not long ago, Renzo Rosso decided to acquire full ownership of the company founded in the early 1990s: “He handles the business, we handle the creativity. Finding the right balance between the two has been the toughest challenge of our career,” the Dutch creative duo begin, speaking from somewhere in Majorca where they’ve taken a bit of a holiday “whilst watching the eclipse with our partners”, which is a lovely image, particularly as it evokes what the ideal division of labour in a fashion house should be – a concept that has long since faded, given that designers now discuss entry-level prices like merchandising directors even in pre-show interviews, in front of the legendary board of so-called inspirations which, incidentally, they rarely put together themselves (the design department takes care of that) and which is primarily intended to whet the appetite of journalists, particularly television reporters who, by filming those reproductions of Velázquez and Frida Kahlo thrown haphazardly into the middle of a photo of a sunset by the sea, guarantee themselves some ‘great coverage’ that ‘adds a splash of colour’. As for Viktor&Rolf, who recreate all the garments from their collections in miniature by dressing Victorian dolls in them – in a personal collection that follows in the tradition of the famous 18th-century Pandoras – no one has ever seen so much as a single image beyond the official portraits and an unforgettable Vogue America shot by Annie Leibovitz some fifteen years ago, in which they played Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum alongside Natalia Vodianova as Alice – and that’s without even mentioning the fit, that is, the wearability of their garments, or rather the lack thereof: sky-high collars, extremely tight sleeves; if you do even a modicum of sport, this brand isn’t for you.

And yet, there is no doubt that their presentations have left an indelible mark on the memories of audiences near and far, so much so that around twenty of these unforgettable appearances will be on display from 25 September to 22 November at 10 Corso Como in the first solo exhibition dedicated to them, ‘Spectrum’, curated by Alessio de Navasques, who a couple of years ago organised the excellent exhibition ‘Yohji Yamamoto. Letter to the Future’ in the same venue a couple of years ago. The fact that a venue primarily dedicated to retail and entertainment such as 10 Corso Como is seeking to showcase a creative duo who describe themselves as ‘fashion artists’ and who focus on cultural expression far more than on the so-called ‘product’ is a great credit to its current owner, Tiziana Fausti, even though it is logical to expect that some of the duo’s hard-to-find garments will sooner or later turn up amongst the elegant racks of the building – and, after all, Rosso would have every reason to want this to happen. Although fashion increasingly operates through imagery and ‘constantly challenges the conventions of fashion and its mechanisms of representation’, as the press release announcing the exhibition states, unfortunately making clothes also means selling them, not just placing them in museums; hence we have this visually striking – that is, Instagram-worthy – project, “conceived specifically for the Gallery’s spaces by the Viktor&Rolf fashion house as a single installation”, and by Il Foglio della Moda to a series of questions for the duo on the theme of this issue, namely the persistent lack of irony in an industry which, for many years, has lavished it on every garment, every reference and every gadget. Viktor&Rolf have always allowed themselves as much irony and experimentation as they wished, ever since the early 1990s when, fresh from winning the Festival d’Hyères – which, amongst many others but with a longer history and greater prestige, honours the best newcomers – they shared their friendship, life and work in a Parisian studio so small that, to carve out a workspace from those few square metres, they were forced to push their mattress up against the wall. Even today, thirty years on, they say they do not think about the future “but rather reflect on the concept of time as it applies to fashion”, on the indispensable value of fashion shows as venues and moments of representation, and on the need to pause, from time to time, to take stock. “Since we started, our approach hasn’t changed much – quite the opposite, in fact. Fashion has always been a very personal journey for us. We see our work as a self-portrait: the struggle between pure creativity and commercial interests is nothing new and has always been a kind of conflict. That’s why haute couture is so important to us: it’s a safe creative space where there are no restrictions. Our work is like a laboratory, a place to experiment and develop ideas. Fashion has always been at the heart of our research: its codes, its appearance, its structure. Each new season offers us the opportunity to look at fashion from a different perspective. In this sense, over thirty years of work have yielded an ever-wider spectrum of perspectives on the subject.” The fact that today’s fashion is particularly devoid of irony, and not very entertaining, is therefore not, they say, the result of the increasingly stringent commercial diktats of the holding companies to which most brands belong, but rather a “reflection of the world we live in today. ‘And as far as we’re concerned,’ they add, ‘even though we try to express serious ideas through our work, irony comes naturally to us. We’re rather detached and rational in our way of thinking; perhaps that’s the reason. And we strive to create complex works. Irony, humour, sadness… it all plays a part in our creative process.’ At times, these conflicting emotions surface all at once, eliciting both positive and negative reactions from the audience; indeed, it was hard not to feel a twinge of unease when, at the Winter 2023–2024 collection show, the models took to the catwalk carrying headless, male-like puppets dressed in tuxedos on their shoulders: “The creations must serve a greater purpose,” they explain, “and the fashion show remains the main focus of our project. It is a narrative moment within a performance in which the garments and models portray characters from a broader story,” one that seeks, however, to be linked to the historical moment in which these characters are depicted. Nothing, they are keen to emphasise, is further from their minds than reflection on the future; yet their latest haute couture collection, ‘Gilded Age 2.0’—a representation of the ritual of dressing that seemed to span five centuries of Western history, staged on a catwalk that rotated like a music box—appeared to be precisely that: a reflection on time, on the value of creative continuity, on the evolution of the gestures of dressing, in a continuous interplay, a constant tension between ‘restraint’ and ‘decadence’, moderation and decadence: rough, soft, regal and modest. Although they insist they have no idea how the sector will evolve (“we don’t have a crystal ball”), their fashion is the clearest demonstration of how, on the contrary, they have the time and the means to reflect on it at length. And indeed, they have the answer, or at least a guiding principle: “The future of fashion depends on the society we are all building together”. What we have seen in their last two collections raises more than a few doubts.