Zeniversary: Viktor & Rolf Celebrate 20 Years With Their Fall 2013 Couture Show

Viktor & Rolf Fall 2013 Couture look 21
On a stage meant to evoke the raked sand of a Zen garden, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, who this year celebrate their twentieth anniversary as the avant-garde design team Viktor & Rolf, sit facing each other in meditation poses. It is hardly the way most couture shows begin, and even the “Om” shouted by a cheeky photographer doesn’t rattle their concentration. Then they rise, go to opposite corners of the set, but surprise!—they don’t stay put—during this highly unusual couture show, their continued presence will be called upon.
The 20 models (one for each year the two have been in the business), are clad in voluminous, uniformly black garments. All wear flat sandals—to stay grounded?—but instead of moving elegantly offstage when their star turn is over, they sit, or slope, or even lie in artful piles. Now and again, one of the designers strolls over to help a woman assume her pose, or arrange a pile of fabric, or fluff a fringe. The heaps of models, folds of their ensembles burying each other, are a strange sight indeed—like a mound of ebony stones with lovely heads.
Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren
Despite the extravagance of the garments for their return to the couture calendar after a thirteen-year hiatus—they feature voluptuous bows and puzzle-piece trapunto stitching, the total effect is quite austere. (Ten of the looks have already been sold to an art collector.) The silhouettes are curved and rounded—there is nary a straight seam in sight—and all of the clothes are made of a technical silk whose surface has been manipulated to bring to mind rocks and grass.
“We started with couture, it’s our big love,” Horsting recalls, reflecting on the house’s past two decades. “These clothes may look minimal, but they are actually very intricate.”