Viktor&Rolf Bring 30 Years of Haute Couture to Paris in Major Retrospective

20 Aug

Viktor & Rolf 2025 Viktor Horsting (left) et Rolf Snoeren (right) ©VLM Studio

Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren built their reputation by treating haute couture as a place for exaggeration, performance and visual ideas. Since founding Viktor&Rolf in 1993, the Dutch duo have made dresses into towering constructions, layered garments into sculptural forms and runway presentations into theatrical events. Their approach has made them among the most recognisable provocateurs in contemporary fashion.

From January 28 through July 4, 2027, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs will present Le monde de Viktor&Rolf. 30 ans de haute couture, a retrospective spanning more than three decades and more than 100 haute couture creations. Originally conceived for the Kunsthalle München by curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot in close collaboration with the House of Viktor&Rolf, the Paris presentation will combine garments with archival material, the designers’ miniature dolls and immersive installations.

Viktor&Rolf emerged in the 1990s with collections that challenged the conventional relationship between the body and the garment. Their 1999 Russian Doll show made that argument through performance: Maggie Rizer stood on a rotating platform while the designers dressed her in nine successive layers, turning the act of getting dressed into the event itself. Sixteen years later, Wearable Art pushed the idea further. The couture was constructed from framed, painterly panels, with some garments incorporating images from Baroque and Rococo paintings in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. During the presentation, Viktor&Rolf removed selected pieces from the models and hung them on a wall as paintings.

Diamond Kite Haute couture collection (Elpida Voryas), SS/PE 2026 © Vincent Lappartient

The retrospective will return to both ideas through a series of thematic chapters. The monumental Russian nesting-doll looks will appear alongside pieces from Fashion Statements, where text became part of the garment through phrases such as “NO” and “DREAM ON”. Another section will examine the designers’ work for the performing arts, while recent runway collections will be shown publicly for the first time.

The exhibition will also trace Viktor&Rolf’s experiments beyond couture. Their approach to upcycling can be seen in Boulevard of Broken Dreams (2017), for which the designers dismantled old and damaged evening dresses and rebuilt them into new garments, highlighting the joins with gold in reference to kintsugi. Fragrance became another field for experimentation: Bonbon, launched in 2014, took the form of a bow-shaped bottle, with a scent built around peach, caramel and creamy woods..

Animated projections and immersive installations will extend the garments into the exhibition space, continuing the theatrical logic of the runway presentations.