Viktor & Rolf

[xopher215]

For humble and Astrid .

... and everyone else who liked it or missed it.

 

[xopher215]

© Christopher Moore Ltd.

 

[Astrid21]

Thank you.

 

[humble balmy gore]

Thank you so much Xopher!

 

[ultramarine]

I want ...anything with NO PRINTS from this collection!
Tks, xopher!

 

[MissAnia]

Viktor & Rolf build a doll house

By Suzy Menkes
Published: June 16, 2008

LONDON: The little people dance on the top floor of their elegant house, sparkly dresses twinkling as they twirl. Down below, like an Alice-in-Wonderland fairy tale, life-size versions of the dolls are standing in line.

"We are hoping we have built the largest doll house in the world," says Rolf Snoeren who, with his design partner Viktor Horsting, has produced at London's Barbican Art Gallery a fashion moment of pure enchantment.
"The House of Viktor & Rolf" (from Wednesday to Sept. 21) lives up to its name. The exhibition is dominated by a gigantic doll house, a graceful structure with Palladian proportions where miniature versions of 15 years of fashion fill the series of rooms on three levels.
You first glimpse the structure behind the sequinned-and-torn outfit the Dutch design duo created for an installation in 1993, after they graduated from Arnem Academy of Art and Design in the Netherlands.
Then you look at the panorama of outfits within each room; or peep through windows from behind, allowing a moment of eerie intimacy with the dolls and a chance to see the exquisite details, like the bows running down the back of a wedding gown the designers created in 2003 for Holland's real, live princess: Mabel of Orange-Nassau.
But the most dramatic effect is to stand on the upstairs balcony and take a panoramic view of the house that Victor & Rolf have built with the Dutch architect Siebe Tettero.
"We wanted it to be a narrative - we chose all the iconic pieces and reworked them in miniature," said Snoeren, explaining the concept of little and large: mannequins wearing outfits from the collections with the doll-sized versions created over months of work. Horsting explained how each porcelain face was modeled, like a Victorian doll, but then colored with the collection's make-up - including the alabaster skin and russet hair of their muse, the actress Tilda Swinton.
The exhibition is the apogee of the designers' work, which has focused on the presentation from the beginning of their joint careers - and especially since they came to international attention by winning the fashion contest at Hyères, France, in 1993. By embracing multimedia, the exhibition goes beyond the doll house to bring the collections virtually to its audience. A video of each show is projected behind the life-sized outfits, so that a coat made of cowbells is accompanied with the tinkling of bells on film, as the models walked through smoky darkness.
Similarly, there is the 2005 show video of Tori Amos playing the piano, behind the display of romantic dresses, appliquéd with roses, embroidered with a "love" message or with a broderie anglaise pillow representing a "Bedtime Story," their boudoir-themed collection of 2005-6.
"The concept is a fashion house that contains their whole world - and of those great fashion moments, like the Russian dolls and the 'Atomic Bomb,"' says Jane Alison, the Barbican's senior curator. She was referring to shows in which outfits were layered on a single model under one rotund cape like successive layers of Russian dolls; and the explosion of "mushroom clouds" at a bulked-up neckline.
Alison describes the duo as "intelligent, creative - and demanding, as you would expect." But she says that she felt that the result is "a bravura statement of all they have done" and worthy of being in an art gallery.
The intriguing exhibition poses the question of whether Viktor & Rolf are designers or conceptual artists who work their surreal ideas in fashion. The clothes themselves are classic, but are used to make striking fashion statements, as when a collection was bathed in metallic silver; or when the word "No" was sculpted in fabric to reject "fast" fashion.
Horsting and Snoring called their 1996 collection "Dreams in Miniature." And that is the effect of the dolls, with their impassive, enigmatic features, which re-create under one "roof" the complex emotions and ideas of their creators.


[iht]

 

[boba_the_anchor]

Does anybody have more photos of this exhibition?

 

[Matay]

Does anybody have more photos of this exhibition?

i'm interested to see/hear more about it too.
lovely idea, with the dolls and all.

there is a book coming out in August to do with the exhibition i believe

(www.amazon.com)

i would love to hear if it will tour once it closes up in London too...not that amazing exhibitions like this generally make it to Australia

 

[Andymoon]

V & R have the BEST stores! they are so creative, even more than Lanvin to me.

 

[rox_yr_sox]

Viktor & Rolf's Amsterdam studio
Source: my scans from Elle Decoration No. 183

 

[from: sophia]

http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f60/house-viktor-rolf-barbican-exhibition-74549.html
I started this thread on the exhibition.