Viktor & Rolf Couture Spring 2023
The consumption of images that have been filtered through screens and all sorts of algorithms can lead to believe in six impossible things before breakfast, just like Lewis Carroll's White Queen.
That's certainly how Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren felt when they came up with their collection couture spring, whose starting point was seeing the world through our phones and the subsequent disconnection between images and the reality behind them.
Not only is there something very random about a juxtaposition that "goes from making cakes to war, the [emergency] climate to vacation destinations,” as Snoeren said, but it also gets us “used to seeing as possible [things that are] impossible,” Horsting explained before the show.
So in their spring collection, they leaned into another disconnect: the clichéd couture sentiment of fashion history and today. It took the form of an absurd take on stereotypical couture dresses, all embroidered with bodices and large skirts in beautiful soft colors, to which “strange things happen,” they said.
Among these strange occurrences: a dress that seemed to fly off the body; one that fell forward horizontally as if the model and outfit had collided at right angles; a third completely upside down and resting on the hips, and another immobile two steps from its wearer.
All impossibilities that "will end as an image but [are] not only an image but also a real thing,” Horsting pointed out.
To bring them to life, the duo has created yet another opposing duo, the needle and stitching thread augmented with 3D printing, which was used to construct the structures. Glimpses inside the dresses - and at the eminently normal first group - showed that beyond the acres of chiffon lies the very real technical mastery of the pair, which has gone from the principles of classic tailoring to the calculation of how to precisely balance dresses to make them, finally, wearable so models can glide elegantly across the room.
Seeing these Viktor & Rolf designs as mere products can be next to impossible, but seeing one on the likes front row guest Doja Cat, sporting an unlikely mustache, is a very real possibility.
The consumption of images that have been filtered through screens and all sorts of algorithms can lead to believe in six impossible things before breakfast, just like Lewis Carroll's White Queen.
That's certainly how Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren felt when they came up with their collection couture spring, whose starting point was seeing the world through our phones and the subsequent disconnection between images and the reality behind them.
Not only is there something very random about a juxtaposition that "goes from making cakes to war, the [emergency] climate to vacation destinations,” as Snoeren said, but it also gets us “used to seeing as possible [things that are] impossible,” Horsting explained before the show.
So in their spring collection, they leaned into another disconnect: the clichéd couture sentiment of fashion history and today. It took the form of an absurd take on stereotypical couture dresses, all embroidered with bodices and large skirts in beautiful soft colors, to which “strange things happen,” they said.
Among these strange occurrences: a dress that seemed to fly off the body; one that fell forward horizontally as if the model and outfit had collided at right angles; a third completely upside down and resting on the hips, and another immobile two steps from its wearer.
All impossibilities that "will end as an image but [are] not only an image but also a real thing,” Horsting pointed out.
To bring them to life, the duo has created yet another opposing duo, the needle and stitching thread augmented with 3D printing, which was used to construct the structures. Glimpses inside the dresses - and at the eminently normal first group - showed that beyond the acres of chiffon lies the very real technical mastery of the pair, which has gone from the principles of classic tailoring to the calculation of how to precisely balance dresses to make them, finally, wearable so models can glide elegantly across the room.
Seeing these Viktor & Rolf designs as mere products can be next to impossible, but seeing one on the likes front row guest Doja Cat, sporting an unlikely mustache, is a very real possibility.
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