Viktor & Rolf Haute Couture Fashion Show Paris FW2015

In February Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren announced they would stop creating and producing ready to wear collections and fully focus on their Haute Couture shows. There might have been some disappointment, but on the other hand it results in even stronger Haute Couture pieces. Just as they showed yesterday when they presented their Fall 2015 Haute Couture fashion show. Although fashion? Perhaps we should consider it more art, as the collection was named Wearable Art. And what better place to unfold your pieces of art than in the gallery at the Palais de Tokyo, led by the sound of Henrik Schwarz’ melodic soundtrack.

For coming fall/winter, the crossing line between the apparently separate worlds of fashion and art was pretty blurry. Can fashion be art and vice versa? According to the famous Dutch fashion duo, it sure can. A one shoulder dress transformed into an artwork, back into a dress and into an artwork again. We saw hinged frames on coats, dresses, and capes. Soft painted colors are splattered on purely and folded or cinched white canvasses. There seemed to be an interesting conversation between Dutch Golden Age paintings and raw and spontaneous action painting. And we spotted several trompe l’oeil techniques: each artwork is executed in a complex layering of laser-cut jacquards, embroideries and appliqués. As the show was built up beautifully by each look, unfolding slowly the whole art (or fashion)collection, the final look showed the biggest and most complete artwork, as a grand finale—a huge Dutch still life dress on a moving model.

Viktor and Rolf are always up for some entertainment and unexpected show elements, so of course they wouldn’t ‘just’ send their models on the runway. Once again, the designers took the stage themselves too.  They untied their works from several models and hanging them on the white backdrop. All for the sake of that one important question. “We are fashion artists. But what does this mean, we asked ourselves. What do we want to do?” the designers explained to WWD magazine. Art collector Han Nefkens, a longstanding collaborator of Viktor&Rolf, acquired once again a piece that will be donated to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. So would that make it art? Perhaps the answer is supposed to never be found. The question seems to be far more interesting than the answer.