OUT OF THE BOX
A new exhibition at the NGV gives an intimate insight into the world of avant-garde designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren.
A new exhibition at the NGV gives an intimate insight into the world of avant-garde designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren.
It’s couture week in Paris – fashion at its most glamorous, when the very notion of luxury and refinement justifies a hefty price tag. For months now, the industry’s couturiers and their petites mains have been toiling away, no expense spared, on their latest proposition of red-carpet dressing, bridal wear and black tie for the global elite. Dutch designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren can always be counted on to challenge the status quo. Street urchins are not the first thing that springs to mind when one thinks of couture, but for their autumn/winter ’16/’17 couture collection, Vagabonds, it was less “ladies who lunch” and more “Dickensian street scamp” with each look finished off with a jaunty, “battered” top hat that would have done Artful Dodger proud.
In the duo’s hands, the usual suspects – jeans, sweaters, blazers and evening gowns – were given new life and embellished with tulle ruffles, artfully woven scraps of brightly coloured fabrics and an excessive number of buttons and beads. More than just crafty couture, however, a study of each garment revealed that the patchwork of fabrics was taken from their archives.
“We mixed the old fabrics all together and created something new,” says Horsting, over coffee the next day. “It was really like looking to the past, but not a nostalgic way, in an almost detached way, and creating something new based on that.”
The impetus for such reflection, in this, their 23rd year in the business, was the decision to shutter their ready-to-wear business last year, and focus on the art of couture. While many view haute couture as a redundant industry or a marketing exercise, it is now the future for Viktor & Rolf. “Couture is like a laboratory for ideas and a free zone where we can experiment and focus on the work that we are best at, instead of doing things that are expected of us,” says Snoeren.
Self-proclaimed “fashion artists”, known for their technical daring and showmanship, Horsting and Snoeren rarely do what people expect. The duo first met while studying fashion at ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem in the Netherlands, and became fast friends when they found they had much in common. So much so, that they went on to play up their physical similarities (like fashion’s Gilbert & George) by cutting their hair and styling facial hair in the same manner and wearing interchangeable glasses. Even their illustration styles share such a resemblance that it’s difficult to tell their croquis apart. “We also have very similar handwriting,” adds Horsting with a shrug, “We always have.”
AIn many ways, it is their recognisable “sameness” that offers them certain anonymity as individuals. This is key, because as famous as their personas are, they are very private. In interviews, both are reticent and say very little, while saying just enough. A certain shyness perhaps, or a symptom of their perceived indifference to the fashion system as a whole.
“When I spend time with them, we never talk about fashion: we talk about literature, music, travel and ideas but hardly ever about fashion,” says Dutch art collector Han Nefkens, who started collecting Viktor & Rolf works in 2006 and has since become a close friend.
We meet again a month later, in the Viktor & Rolf Amsterdam atelier – an imposing 17th- century mansion, once occupied by the mayor, in the city’s canal district – and they seem more at ease. Dressed casually in jeans and sweaters, with Snoeren’s 13-year- old dachshund, Zwaantje (“little swan”), lying at their feet, today they’re almost chatty.
About us, the lavish interiors – soaring ceilings and impressive empire windows overlooking the manicured back garden – are juxtaposed with the duo’s contemporary tastes: they’re seated in Eames cowskin chairs and Grayson Perry’s Map of an Englishman hangs on the wall behind. A photograph of Horsting and Snoeren posing with Perry’s alter ego, Claire, is one of the many portraits, some by the likes of close friends Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, that cover the walls of the grand central staircase.
That fashion and art collide is hackneyed rhetoric. For the talented few, fashion is undeniably an art form, but Horsting and Snoeren’s conceptual approach pushes the boundaries beyond talent and technique. Case in point is last year’s autumn/winter couture collection, Wearable Art, where garments, with silhouettes sculpted from what appeared to be deconstructed picture frames, were transformed literally into works of art that could be hung on the wall.
“We’ve made a lot of things that were fashion related, but not clothes as such,” says Horsting, pointing out the time they went on strike in 1996 and postered the streets of Paris with a campaign that said: “Viktor & Rolf On Strike”, instead of producing a collection. Then there was that season, in 2014, that they produced a performance piece instead of a fashion show, dressing members of the Dutch National Ballet in latex leotards and draped skirts that more closely resembled bare skin than any garment that could end up on a hanger.
“What is so fascinating about Viktor and Rolf is that it’s about unlimited imagination combined with a very strong structure and a very thoughtful concept – these seem like contradictions, but it’s not with them,” says Nefkens, who acquired a look from Wearable Art for his own collection.
This year, for the first time, a large selection of the duo’s museum-worthy designs will be on exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, for the debut of Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Artists. Featuring 35-plus garments, spanning from their debut collection in 1993 to the recent Vagabond collection, the show is not so much a walk through the archives as a study of their remarkable process and craftsmanship.
“It’s more contemporary than a retrospective exhibition – it looks towards the future and invites you to discover their universe,” says exhibition curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot, who masterminded NGV’s 2014 blockbuster hit, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier.
“We love the idea of a gallery or museum show, because the details of our work come into focus and you can really take the time to study a piece,” says Horsting, adding: “We also really like that sense of control that comes with a static presentation – so that everything is just right.”
Along with pieces from past collections, many of them displayed in their original mise- en-scène, their renowned Victorian-style doll collection will journey to Melbourne. Each season, a porcelain miniature clothed in an iconic couture look, handcrafted by their atelier, is produced for archival purposes. “We have an army of about 85 of them now,” says Snoeren.
The exhibition will also feature many original works, created specifically for the mise- en-scène. There will be a “mural” of wallpaper, printed from a collage-like catalogue of their sketches, and a mechanical timepiece – a moving catwalk with a clock that kicks off a mechanised fashion show every 15 minutes. The non-stop schedule is a comment on the fashion system, Horsting says, with the easy air of someone who no longer has to contend with such a thing.
“The exhibition is a whole new adventure, playing with the past and presenting the future,” says Loriot, “and it shows clearly that Viktor and Rolf don’t follow trends or Oscars season, or anything of that nature – they set their own rules.” Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Artists is on at the NGV from October 21, 2016 to February 17, 2017. Go to www.ngv.vic.gov.au.