Viktor & Rolf’s Wildest Wearable Art From the Past 25 Years Show Fashion at Its Most Performative

To cynical eyes it might look like Instagram bait these days, but the riotously avant-garde looks that the Dutch designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren consistently showcased under the name Viktor&Rolf were decades ahead of that notion. Indeed, it’s a testament their avant-garde leanings that while fashion rejected them at first, the art world has accepted them with open arms since they started out in 1993. And their new exhibition “Viktor&Rolf: Fashion Artists 25 Years,” which is on display until September at the Kunsthal Rotterdam, is hardly from their first museum showing. Curated by Thierry-Maxime Loriot, the 60 or so works from their couture collections show exactly why Viktor & Rolf’s clothes are often referred to as “works” rather of “designs.” The pair have so embraced the concept of “wearable art” that they once transformed paintings into haute couture and then back again, even hanging up the garments models walked in and then stepped out of on a white wall right on the runway. And while stars like Tilda Swinton and Tori Amos have appeared in their shows in the past, it’s usually the designers or the works that they’ve dreamed up in their 17th-century headquarters in Amsterdam that are doing the performing. Remember the time when they tapped Maggie Rizer to walk their 1999 Russian Doll show and then completely obscured her in nine layers? Or when they put another model in an ultra-luxe portable bed? Take a look inside the exhibition and its catalogue to see those and more of the designers’ most out-there creations over the years, here.