WIT AND WONDER: Commentary on overconsumption, critique of the fashion industry or arch take on current events, every collection offered up by Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren over the past three decades is “always a statement about something,” said fashion curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot.
Hence “Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Statements,” an upcoming exhibition organized by the Kunsthalle München museum in Munich, Germany. Opening on Feb. 23, it is set to run until Oct. 6, 2024, before traveling to other destinations.
“It can be a statement of humor, of irony, of society. All their collections were about their reaction on a particular topic,” continued the curator, noting the “great sense of humor and great sense of irony in [Horsting and Snoeren’s] work,” especially about the industry itself.
Rather than a retrospective, Loriot told WWD the exhibition is intended as an introspection into the designers’ body of work, taking a thematic approach to the passions and obsessions that have been woven into their work of the past three decades.
Take upcycling. “Now it’s trendy, but from their first collection at the Hyères festival [in 1993], they were already upcycling dresses,” said the curator, pointing out the use of vintage fabrics from Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent in Horsting and Snoeren’s first couture lineup.
Transcribing the way Viktor & Rolf “shows are performances and their collections make you smile,” Loriot and the Dutch duo selected some 100 looks to be showcased alongside multimedia elements, sketches, drawings and photographs as well as tapestries, dolls and works by visual artists, including Andreas Gursky and Cindy Sherman.
Other galleries will alight on “key collections that really changed the perception of haute couture and fashion” for Loriot, such as the fall 1999 “Russian Doll” collection that saw model Maggie Rizer dressed in layer after layer.
Also explored here will be their relationship to stage costume, with an exhibit on the designs the duo created for “Der Freischütz,” a 2009 opera production by American theater director and playwright Robert Wilson.
While exhibits will range from the duo’s very first collection and meander all the way through to the most recent collections, such as spring 2023’s “Late Stage Capitalism,” Loriot is adamant the ensemble should not be a “fashion lesson” and appeal to a broad crowd — “anyone who enjoys craftsmanship and unique works,” he said.
The show in Munich will be the third Viktor & Rolf exhibition curated by Loriot, in collaboration with the house and L’Oréal Luxe, after 2016’s “Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Artists” and the “Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Artists 25 Years” of 2018, which celebrated the brand’s 25th anniversary.
The Dutch design duo have also been the subject of the 2022 “Viktor & Rolf: MetaFashion!” exhibition, their first Asian retrospective showcased in Shenzhen, China, and a 2000 show at the Groninger Museum in The Netherlands, held only two years after they started their couture line.
The Montreal-based curator is the force behind hit exhibitions including “Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” and most recently, the “Thierry Mugler: Couturissime,” which concluded a five-city tour at the Brooklyn Museum last year.
