Viktor & Rolf

Getting Into Shape

Review of Viktor & Rolf Fall 2024 Couture Fashion Show

By Mark Wittmer

THE COLLECTION

THE VIBE

THE THEME
Every Viktor & Rolf show promises to surprise and delight as the design duo who are more akin to avant-pop performance art provocateurs pick an unexpected visual theme and take it to its logical extreme. Today’s collection was no exception, although it was particularly fun due to the couture magic they were able to draw out of a seemingly simple concept: shapes.

Three-dimensional shapes with a 50s suburban flair, to be more precise. Typical patternmaking begins with a flat shape; each of Viktor & Rolf’s looks today began with a rectangular prism, a pyramid, a sphere, and develops from there into a wearable work of surrealist pop art. You’ve heard of boulder shoulders, now get ready for rhomboidal shoulders.

Still, believe it or not, these visually crazy and technically masterful three-dimensional structures are just the beginning of the collection’s impact. With such a bold silhouette, you might have expected V&R to go minimal in terms of fabric selection and structural details, but you would be the opposite of right. The two have gone for clashing maximalism, favoring kitschy patterns in bright colors that you might see in a 1950s kitchen or on the housewife who is trapped in it. Bows, ruffles, and oversized fabric buttons complete the aesthetic.

THE BUZZWORDS
Shapely. Avant-pop art. Meta-kitschy.

THE SHOWSTOPPER

Look #17
It’s hard to pick a showstopper in a collection full of showstoppers, but this one might take the cake through sheer angular intensity and power clashing.

THE DIRECTION

THE WRAP UP

The collection is incredibly fun and also funny – and humor is often missing in fashion – but there’s also an almost body-horror-esque aspect to it, and this helps us to see its subtle satirical direction. That kitschy 50s housewife pop-art aesthetic of course goes hand-in-hand with postwar suburban sprawl, with the American dream (yes, Viktor & Rolf are Dutch, but this ideal goes beyond geography) being parceled out into identical plots, with turning people into simple shapes that fit perfectly into their little slot in capitalist society.

Reshaping the fundamental language of couture to transform the body itself, Viktor & Rolf make a powerful statement on embracing the absurd and reclaiming our individuality.