Viktor & Rolf Haute Couture Show FW2023

July 6, 2023 by Jetty
Filed under Fashion, Featured Items, Haute Couture

The brand Viktor & Rolf is 30-years-old, and Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren’s humorous take on fashion hasn’t dimmed. Their ironical spirit is still there, and yesterday’s couture show was V&R tongue-in-cheek-conceptual entertainment. No anniversary collection with revived classics, but a celebration with a leading role for the bathing-suit.

Variations on a theme and repetition is what their repertoire has often revolved around. Here the potential of the bathing suit, be it a covered-up one piece or a tiny bikini, was explored with focus.

The designduo took eye catching elements from their iconic collections and added or transformed it to bikini’s or one piece bathing-suits. Classic V&R details like the big bows of their Flowerbomb-collection, the three dimensional words DREAM ON and NO from their NO-collection (FW 08/09) or the ruffles and long cape taken from their Black Light collection from spring/summer 1999. But there was many more. The duo also invited some celebrities – like Shakira – to wear key-pieces from their old collections to the show.

Yet the show stopping icing on the birthday cake were headless (male?) mannequins wearing black tailored tuxedos, hanging onto the models’ backs, or twisting in multiple formations around their bodies as if they were desperately calling for attention and didn’t want to let go. You can translate those images and this collection into a lot of symbolic stuff. To me it looked like an attempt to embody the women-empowerment, the fact that no matter what a woman is strong and tough as hell and invincible – and that even male designers like Viktor & Rolf couldn’t have survived in the business without women. So maybe, maybe it was also a big ‘thank you’ and humble bow to women.