MILAN — Ahead of a talk with students at Milan’s IULM University, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren met with WWD to discuss topics ranging from the changes in the industry to art and fashion exhibitions.
“We’re not big fans of putting ourselves forward. You wouldn’t believe it, because we’ve been part of our own performances and our own shows occasionally, but that was always out of conceptual necessity,” Horsting said about public speaking. ”But then we also like to talk about our work. I mean, we make our work with passion, and we want to communicate, so if the opportunity arises, we’re happy to oblige. Relatively happy [chuckling].”
In 2015, the designers, who founded the Viktor & Rolf brand in 1993 after winning the International Festival of Fashion and Photography in Hyères, decided to halt their women’s and men’s ready-to-wear business to concentrate on couture, fragrances and special projects. After a decade of absence, in March they said their ready-to-wear line was returning, starting with the fall 2025 season.
Horsting described this as a “modest and discrete way to return, I would say the decision came about in discussions with our business partner OTB.” Couture and fashion are about “experiments, conceptual and artistic experiments, and maybe this is a bit of a business experiment. We have developed lots of ideas and are still developing lots of ideas in couture, and it does feel like a bit of a shame never to take them further, so I would say that’s part of the motivation.”
Snoeren said that couture is about “absolute freedom. We can do whatever we want, and we just enjoy that freedom, the experiment and the self-expression.”
Horsting added that the ready-to-wear collections will be small and focused and presented to the press and retailers but not through fashion shows. “We have couture, how many shows can you [stage]?”
“They will be seasonal but the pressure [associated with the shows] doesn’t make us happy. It’s just not realistic to be creative and have so many shows,” Snoeren said.
Viktor & Rolf Spring 2025 Couture
Team Peter Stigter/Courtesy of V
Asked for a comment on the ongoing changes in the industry, Snoeren said that over the years, “we’ve always focused on our own creativity and our own story, our own language. And sometimes this fits in the trend. Sometimes it doesn’t, but the focus is really inward. This is something that we’re not changing. We’re not anticipating the future, things are always in flux, always changing, yes, but the key is to stick to yourself. It’s worked for more than 30 years now, so it’s a constant in our lives. We notice as soon as we try to adapt or try to see what’s going on around us, it makes us very nervous.”
Snoeren recalled how in the first five years of their career, “we had no press whatsoever, no interest, nobody cared. It was five years that were extremely important for us, living in Paris and thinking of our own fashion language. Then there was a period of madness, of extreme press and interest. We’ve experienced a lot of different reactions and in the end, I think the goal is to be content and to be creative with all scenarios.”
In a sign of renewed confidence in the Dutch designers, OTB in February renewed the collaboration for another five years. The Italian fashion group first invested in the brand in 2008 with a 51 percent stake and raised it to 70 percent in 2019. The remaining 30 percent stake is equally split between Horsting and Snoeren.
In addition to Viktor & Rolf, OTB controls Diesel, Jil Sander, Maison Margiela and Marni, production arms Staff International and Brave Kid, and holds a stake in the Amiri brand.
After entering the fragrance scene in 2005 with Flowerbomb, the brand in 2018 launched an e-commerce platform dedicated to its signature scents under L’Oréal, launching the successful Spicebomb and Good Fortune fragrances.
Horsting said the support from OTB and L’Oréal “has been incredible; creatively, they never, never interfered.”
In 2018, the brand celebrated 25 years in fashion with projects such as the “Viktor & Rolf Fashion Artists” retrospective at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, and on the occasion of the brand’s 30th anniversary, 100 of their most iconic pieces were showcased in the exhibition “Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Statements” at the Kunsthalle in Munich.
With several exhibitions staged to present their clothes in museums in cities such as Shenzen, Melbourne and, most recently, at the MAXXI in Rome, asked about their connection to art and whether they believe fashion is art and designers are artists, Horsting said that “in general fashion can be many things, and the same can be said for art. That’s why we started calling ourselves fashion artists on some occasions, because it kind of evades the question, and it kind of embraces both disciplines.”
This fall, they will stage their first U.S. exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, as reported.
“I think how we might see ourselves as artists, is that our couture shows are a way to express ourselves, more than dressing people,” Snoeren said.
Two of fashion’s consummate showmen, Snoeren and Horsting have incorporated elements such as fog, pyrotechnics and scaffolding into their shows, which they view as performances and Horsting said they “try to use fashion to say something more than a message about style. Fashion is often about style. We’ll try to use fashion as a medium and tell other kinds of stories, perhaps that’s also what sets us apart from other designers.”
He continued by contending that clothes presented in a museum or a gallery are also “objects which require a different way of looking at them and a different kind of appreciation. And I’m always happy that people can see the craftsmanship involved.”
A collection begins at their desk, “with a thousand sketches, and we just talk and there’s a lot of messaging if we’re not in the same place. It’s a constant dialogue,” Horsting said.
They hardly ever have any kind of quarrel or disagreement, scrapping any idea they don’t both agree on.
“We had a moment with the [spring 2023 collection with surrealist garments] worn upside down that was very difficult to walk in, and one of us didn’t want to show it, one of us was very afraid that something would happen and it would all become a big disaster and a fiasco,” Horsting said with a smile. “Everybody else was in agreement with the other that was not afraid, which goes to show that we shouldn’t be guided by fear.”
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