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Local Expert: Lulu P.

At the tender age of 31, I decided to quit my cushy life in Toronto to see if I could move to London successfully. Much to my surprise, things worked out well and I'm looking forward to being a long-term tourist in my adopted city....

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June 23, 2008
Attraction

The House of Viktor & Rolf

The first time I really noticed Viktor & Rolf, it was 2001 and they were showing their Black Hole collection for Fall/Winter 2001. I was blown away. The collection was elegant, cutting-edge, glamorous, nihilistic, theatrical and sexy all at once. I was instantly smitten with the Dutch design duo and their penchant for high concept, high fashion.

Cut to 2008 and we find the avant-garde Viktor & Rolf have — horror of horrors — broken through the ranks of popular culture. They launched their first highly successful fragrance, Flowerbomb, in 2005 and in 2007 they saw their collection for H&M sell out in mere minutes.

When they announced that they’d be collaborating with the Barbican Art Gallery to present a retrospective of their work over the past 15 years, I have to admit I was frothing at the mouth to see it. This past Friday, I cut out of work early and made my way to the Barbican for what I expected to be a visual feast.

I was not disappointed.

I could rant on and on about the exhibit, but that would just take far too long. Here are just a few of my highlights:

•    The pieces were shown on life-sized nineteenth century dolls, whose faces were painted to look like the model that originally wore the garment on the runway.
•    The huge 3-floor white doll house that featured miniature re-creations of each garment shown in the exhibit. These pieces were modelled by miniature versions of the life-sized nineteenth century dolls.
•    An art gallery installation that they put together for their 1995 Supermodel collection that features Elvis-like gold costumes suspended mid-air, in front of a wall featuring the names of famous supermodels. In the background you can hear children chanting the supermodels’ names.
•    The section devoted to the Russian Doll collection for Fall/Winter 1999/2000 — their famous show that featured model Maggie Rizer as a reverse Russian doll, donning the entire collection, layer by layer.
•    The section devoted to the Bluescreen collection for Fall/Winter 2002/2003, which incorporated blue screen technology into each garment in the collection.

If you’re in London before the exhibit ends on September 21, 2008, you really should make some time to see it. The House of Viktor & Rolf exhibit at the Barbican is the epitome of high fashion as art.

The House of Viktor & Rolf
Barbican Art Gallery
Tickets: £8 adults, £6 concessions
Insider's Rating:
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS, United Kingdom

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