I've never really been a fan of avant-garde fashion per se even though I appreciate the obvious degree of skill involved. This is because I firmly believe that fashion should be fun, light and frothy and "avant-garde" anything usually signals obscure references to complicated, cerebral, often dark themes. I also believe that fashion should enhance your body and make you look and feel good about yourself rather than make a political statement. Alas, while this is still largely the case, I think I may have to carve out an exception for the impossibly cute Dutch design duo Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren better known to followers of fashion as Viktor & Rolf. The duo had produced the lovely wedding gown commissioned by Princess Mabel of Oranje-Nassau in 2004 which I loved. The strong clean lines of the gown and the bow and ribbon details arranged in lattice formation had a strong whiff of Balenciaga so I can't say I wasn't intrigued but I had remained for the most part impervious to their charms and therefore never really paid close attention. It wasn't until I read a brief interview they gave to a London newspaper to kick off The House of Viktor & Rolf exhibit at the Barbican Art Gallery however that I started to come around. Their honest, self-deprecating answers to the journalist's Q&A suggested to me that behind the stoic gaze and the nerdy glasses hid a pair of clever agents provocateurs with a sly sense of humor. I of course had to know more. So, off I went to the London's Barbican Art Gallery.
Rolf Snoeren and Viktor Horsting, Barbican Art Gallery, London. Photo by Christopher Moore, courtesy of The Barbican Art Gallery.
The exhibit, the pair's first British solo exhibit, is a major retrospective of their design career from their early success at Hyeres and their guerilla marketing tactics during the 1996 Paris Fashion Week until present. For the occasion, the design duo commissioned a two-story, triple-decker doll house from a Belgian dollhouse maker featuring porcelain dolls wearing meticulously reproduced miniatures of their designs in a nod to the Theatre de la Mode, a post-WWII initiative devised by the French Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture to revive the industry nearly crippled by the war. I find this detail of the exhibit revealing because for all their avant-garde credentials, Viktor and Rolf are clearly still playing within the framework of couture as staked out by classic French couturiers. In fact, their work is rich with references to Schiaparelli, Balenciaga and others.
The doll theme is also a fitting one for when viewed in its entirety, what emerges from their body of work is a somewhat childlike take on the very "serious" world of fashion - not at all what you would expect from "avant-garde" designers. The 1999-2000 "Russian Doll" collection for instance where a single model was painstakingly dressed in ten different layers by the designers is reminiscent of playing dress-up or the 2005-06 "Bedtime Story" collection replete with bedding and pillows sewn into the dress again plays on the childhood theme. Their 2008 "No" collection, a comment on the breakneck speed of the fashion cycle, viewed in this context looks less like a political statement than the stance of a naughty toddler unwilling to accept that bedtime has arrived. This said, don't let the childlike exuberance of the collections fool you. When viewed up close, their creations are meticulously constructed revealing the kind of skill and painstaking precision in the lines, the volumes and the details that suggest that they not only know how to sketch out their ideas but they can actually execute them as well. While this may seem trite, not every designer that comes along can do both convincingly. But above all else, the facet of their work that I find most compelling is their sly, somewhat subversive sense of humor. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 2004 "Ballroom" collection when they upstaged their own beautifully restrained and elegant collection by sending an entire cast of male couples to execute intricate ballroom steps to a live performed by Rufus Wainwright.
The exhibit is as meticulous as it is multi-dimensional - there is video footage of virtually all their haute couture collections, life-size mannequins sporting key looks from various periods, the mammoth doll house with the procession of dolls decked out in the miniature creations and an excellent exhibit catalogue coauthored by Caroline Evans and Susannah Frankel. You can therefore delve as deeply into their work as you want or content yourself with a mere perusal of their frocks. Either way, I found it truly satisfying - not always a foregone conclusion where exhibits dedicated to fashion are concerned. So, by all means, regardless of whether avant-garde fashion is your cup of tea or not, this is an exhibit that shouldn't be missed. The House of Viktor & Rolf runs until September 21, 2008. For further information, please contact the Barbican Art Gallery. Enjoy!
Sincerely,
The Luxe Chronicles
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