{"id":554,"date":"2018-06-26T15:10:53","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/dev\/?p=554"},"modified":"2018-06-26T15:18:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:18:47","slug":"walkers-of-the-wayward-path","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"Walkers of the Wayward Path"},"content":{"rendered":"

Viktor&Rolf<\/strong>
\nZOO Magazine #53<\/a>, 2016.<\/h2>\n

Read the PDF<\/a><\/p>\n

Modern art and fashion have always been closely intertwined. Artistic trends succeed each other in pretty much the same way as fashions do; fashion merges art and life as modern art never will. In the Netherlands, breaking boundaries between disciplines has become a trademark of all good art and design. Dutch fashion designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, better known as Viktor&Rolf, have dedicated their lives to doing both. Together with other luminaries of their generation such as Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, they have changed the rules of the haute couture game, and have helped on their way the increasing acceptance of fashion as art. Some call it anti-fashion.<\/p>\n

For almost twenty-five years now, Viktor&Rolf have been walking off the beaten track of haute couture both by inspiration and necessity. Their strategies, often borrowed from conceptualism, have involved poster distribution, smashing ceramics on the catwalk, as well as testing the endurance of their models. In the Fall\/Winter 1996\u201397 collection, Viktor&Rolf went on strike as a statement against the high tempo of haute couture \u201cseasonal\u201d work; for their first couture collection they created breakable accessories; and in The Fashion Show, their Fall\/Winter 2007\u201308 couture collection, they literally put their models \u201cin the spotlight\u201d by having each of them carry several. They commented on fashion using fashion. They made art.<\/p>\n

And they did much more than that. They founded an internationally successful brand and cultivated fruitful collaborations with cutting-edge photographers such as Ines van Lamsweerde, and Blommers and Schumm. They were hired by L\u2019Or\u00e9al to develop a line of fragrances including the popular Flower Bomb, and did pr\u00eat-\u00e0-porter for fourteen years with stores in Paris and Milan. About a year ago, they decided it was time to stop designing for the factory-made clothing industry, and to go back to their \u201cstudio.\u201d Since then, Viktor&Rolf have been able to fully dedicated to haute couture again. This Fall\/Winter season, they present \u201cVagabond,\u201d a collection dedicated to their own past collections. Excess, repetition, and self-references are key to creations that feature button-clad basic daywear and military garments, generously embroidered with leftover fabric from previous seasons. From their headquarters in Amsterdam, a historical mansion on the Herengracht, Viktor&Rolf talk to ZOO Magazine about fashion as autobiography, experimentation, and the importance of beauty in everything they do.<\/p>\n

Catherine Somz\u00e9: What does it mean for haute couture to be a laboratory, \u201ca place to experiment\u201d?<\/p>\n

Viktor Horsting: Experimentation is very important to us. It\u2019s a method. On a very practical level, every collection has a new idea but also a technical challenge. There is a new \u201cinvention\u201d coming about.<\/p>\n

Rolf Snoeren: It means for us it\u2019s a free zone to do whatever we want to do without any restrictions.<\/p>\n

CS: You mention that there\u2019s a technical achievement and there is an idea. I imagine the technical achievement has to do with the idea.<\/p>\n

VH: Always! With \u201cVagabond,\u201d we were thinking about time and history. How can we use our own history to create something new? Literally. So, that was the idea we started with. We were also thinking, how can you look at your own history and be equanimous about it? We wanted to have a Zen attitude about our own history.<\/p>\n

CS: What do you mean?<\/p>\n

VH: We translated that by taking all of our fabrics from past collections, and weaving them together without regard for which type of collection or which season they were coming from. We just created a new fabric out of the old.<\/p>\n

CS: Where did the idea to take your own history as a starting point come from?<\/p>\n

RS: Maybe to look at the past and move on.<\/p>\n

VH: We had stopped working with ready-to-wear and were wondering what could be the next step after that. How can we make sense of everything that we\u2019ve done, how can we write a new chapter but without getting rid of everything we\u2019ve done before.<\/p>\n

CS: But you\u2019ve always been forward-looking in you work, so why look back?<\/p>\n

VH: I don\u2019t see a contradiction there. Every season, it happens. You ask yourself what to do next and you ponder about what you\u2019ve done\u00a0previously. Maybe it\u2019s like that for creative people in general. When you\u2019re faced with having to, or wanting to, create something new, there\u2019s always the void. And the question is always what am I going to make?<\/p>\n

RS: Stopping ready-to-wear, breaking with that part of the industry, was important. We were thinking, why does everything have to be new every time? Why not look at the old, why not look at everything we have?<\/p>\n

CS: Is \u201cVagabond\u201d a comment on the fleetingness of fashion then? The need to constantly do something new?<\/p>\n

RS: Maybe not so much on the notion of the \u201cnew,\u201d because you always want to create something new, but rather on the fact that everything you\u2019ve done and worked with has to go away\u2026<\/p>\n

CS: So it was perhaps more about sustainability.<\/p>\n

VH: And then taking fabrics as symbols. We were not just working with materials, we were working with the materials as symbols of previous collections and ideas of the past. So, it\u2019s not only about the sustainability of the materials \u2014 literally upcycling materials \u2014 it is rather about the sustainability of ideas. That was the thinking behind it.<\/p>\n

RS: That\u2019s quite an accurate comment\u2026<\/p>\n

CS: How did you translate that idea into shapes, silhouettes, forms?<\/p>\n

VH: The material dictated the forms in this case.<\/p>\n

CS: But you also used military jackets for instance. What informed that choice?<\/p>\n

VH: Good question\u2026 there were military garments, there were jeans, there were also some trench coats as well as shirts. First, the material itself suggested daywear but then we also added tulle. I don\u2019t really know! There\u2019s something utilitarian about it\u2026<\/p>\n

RS: There was definitely a reference to utilitarianism in order to create to an everyday atmosphere.<\/p>\n

VH: I also think it had to do with the fact that we wanted to create a look which suggested wearability, or an everyday use at least. And even if it was just a suggestion, that was the frame of reference. The technique, weaving, was really about the basis of clothing, fabric making. Before \u201cVagabond,\u201d we had made collections that had been quite far removed from the idea of wearability, from clothing as such.<\/p>\n

CS: Such as the \u201cWearable Art\u201d collection, for which you created dresses out of printed canvases that looked like paintings, with frames and all?<\/p>\n

VH: When we stopped making ready-to-wear, we asked ourselves once again, what does couture mean for us.<\/p>\n

RS: The \u201cWearable Art\u201d collection was a literal translation of the idea that our fashion was art to be worn. And lots of the time, our work starts with language, and then we visualize that language. Let\u2019s take an example. People often talk of \u201cred carpet dressing.\u201d We then literally created a collection using red carpet! We just wanted people to think about that phrase, we wanted simply to communicate to people what that means, literally. It\u2019s a visualization of words.<\/p>\n

VH: The thinking behind \u201cWearable Art\u201d was the same.<\/p>\n

CS: But with \u201cVagabond\u201d you referenced yourselves.<\/p>\n

VH: We often take our own history as a frame of reference. It\u2019s a recurrent theme in our work. An important work in that sense is the dolls we started making in 2008 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our label at the Barbican. The dolls wore miniature versions of iconic pieces from the past. It\u2019s not necessarily fashion per se but the thinking behind it is similar to what we also do in fashion.<\/p>\n

RS: Perhaps the \u201cVagabond\u201d collection was more literal than before though, but we also see our work as an autobiography. The clothes say something about us. It tells about how we feel rather than about what we think is an upcoming fashion trend for instance.<\/p>\n

CS: In this sense, you\u2019re as much conceptualists as you are expressionists\u2026<\/p>\n

VH: You\u2019re the first to say that, but I think you\u2019re right. We usually start talking to each other and drawing. \u201cDoodling\u201d would actually be more appropriate. It\u2019s about those moments that you do something semi-consciously while talking or doing something else. In meetings, for instance, I need to draw because otherwise I can\u2019t concentrate, and there\u2019s always a kind of spontaneity to those drawings. We take them as starting points.<\/p>\n

CS: I must say this sounds totally different from your drawing process in the documentary Because We\u2019re Worth It, which seemed very formatted and according to set conventions in fashion drawing.<\/p>\n

VH: It was the filming. People who film always want to see you draw but it can never capture the spontaneous moment. Because I sit with the camera looking over my shoulder and it just does not work that way.<\/p>\n

RS: And each season the process is different anyway…<\/p>\n

VH: For the \u201cVagabond\u201d collection we started with the weaving idea.<\/p>\n

CS: Your work is also as much about craft as it is about ideas. Your haute couture is just as much conceptual art as it is wonderful craft.<\/p>\n

VH: I think beauty is an important word in everything we do. And for us, there is beauty in ideas, but then the execution needs to be beautiful as well. When you think about conceptualism, the idea as such could be sufficient, and then the execution may not be as important. For us it\u2019s not the case, we like both! And then we try to balance.<\/p>\n

CS: And you yourselves! You also always look so sharp and boy-like on photographs. Do you see yourself as embodiments of your own art?<\/p>\n

VH: There is always an element of play. We are very aware of the importance of \u201clooking good\u201d on pictures, and looking good means looking dead serious. When you smile, your face is in action, and at risk of falling prey to deformity! [laugh]<\/p>\n

CS: Since the beginning of your career, you have at times taken the stage yourselves, and played a role in your own fashion shows. During \u201cWearable Art\u201d for instance you helped the models undress, and hung the pictures that were originally folded around their bodies on the walls.<\/p>\n

VH and RS: We take the stage only if we really must. [laugh]<\/p>\n

CS: So you\u2019re performers in spite of yourselves\u2026<\/p>\n

VH and RS: Yes\u2026<\/p>\n

CS: \u2026if the concept requires it, then you do it. VH: Yes. And then, every time we say \u201cnever again\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

RS: \u2026and then this idea pops up and then you have to do it, again!<\/p>\n

CS: You\u2019re working on your new couture collection \u2014 can we get a hint of what it\u2019s going to be about?<\/p>\n

RS: We don\u2019t give hints.<\/p>\n

VH: We\u2019re very superstitious. [laughs]<\/p>\n

CS: Superstitious? That things won\u2019t work in the end?<\/p>\n

VH: No, it\u2019s just not good to talk about these things before hand, also because it\u2019s fully in process.<\/p>\n

CS: So, there\u2019s an element of surprise and magic about a new collection coming into being.<\/p>\n

VH: Hopefully! We constantly ask ourselves, \u201cWhat is it going to be?\u201d<\/p>\n

www.viktor-rolf.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Viktor&Rolf\r\nZOO Magazine #53, 2016","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-zoo-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":794,"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinesomze.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}