One Outfit, Endless Imagination
Get an exclusive look at Viktor & Rolf‘s Spring 2025 couture fashion show from the runways of Paris Couture Fashion Week, held in January 2025.
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Up to 3 key words (five max) that encapsulate the collection
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Every Viktor & Rolf show is a playfully provocative and inventively crafted exploration of a single design concept, drawing on familiar forms but twisting them into surreal shapes that invite reflection on the status of clothing and how the fashion industry shapes our reality.
This time around, the entire collection takes shape as a riff on a single, simple look: a camel trench coat worn over a white shirt and navy blue pants. On paper, it sounds boring – but in the hands of Viktor & Rolf this straightforward and safe ensemble is endlessly transmogrified into a series of stunningly imaginative silhouettes.
The opening look reworked the trench with ballooning, wing-like sleeves and tube textures, and from here the collection continued to expand in dramatic directions. One look saw each part of the ensemble oversized and covered with bows; in another they were dramatically shrunk and wrinkled. Chaotically playful ruching transformed the classic coat into immense avant-garde volumes. In some looks, the garments themselves changed categories completely – becoming a dress, or a skirt, or a cape – while still maintaining just enough of the original character for us to recognize the transformation that had taken place.
It’s exciting to see how the brand draws on and evolve its signature touches even within this limited framework, with familiar motifs like bows and dramatically puffed up shoulders and necklines finding new expressions.
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THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
In the wake of the quiet luxury trend, we saw plenty of collections, editorials, moodboards, and celebrity style moments that championed the office-chic ensemble as the new norm, a kind of go-to uniform for the stagflation era. But where’s the fun in that? Viktor & Rolf brilliantly subvert the idea of safe, sober, sophisticated dressing, exploding the codes of mundanity through a combination of daring inventiveness and deep couture know-how. They have taken one simple outfit and reimagined it 24 different ways, but we get the sense that the show could have kept going forever. Endlessly creative Viktor & Rolf challenge us to break out of the mindset of merely accepting the reality in front of us and to imagine something bigger, better, more fun.
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