Paris shows highlight ‘masstige’ retail trend
PARIS — Viktor & Rolf are about to become household names thanks to their hookup with Swedish clothing giant H&M, but they stuck to their roots as conceptual designers with a show on Monday involving ballroom dancers and a live performance by singer Rufus Wainwright.
The Dutch design duo transformed the nondescript Carrousel du Louvre conference center into a ballroom with crystal chandeliers, small tables laden with champagne buckets and a string orchestra.
Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, who dress alike and finish each other’s sentences, said the display was an escape from reality.
“We are die-hard romantics but at the same time we’re also conceptualists. We were in the mood to do something light and entertaining, so that’s how we came to think of ballroom dancing,” Horsting told reporters.
“So we played with fake skin and fringes and a masculine/feminine theme,” Snoeren added.
Wainwright reprised his recent Carnegie Hall homage to Judy Garland with the classic “Over the Rainbow.” A couple twirled out, setting the tone for a collection that drew heavily on the flesh-colored stockings and glitzy sequins familiar to fans of dancing competitions.
Television series such as Britain’s “Strictly Come Dancing” have sparked a new craze for retro dance styles like the rumba, the foxtrot and the cha cha cha, but it was hard to see how these tasseled and fringed creations could relate to everyday life.
Viktor & Rolf may seem an odd choice to succeed such mainstream names as Karl Lagerfeld and Stella McCartney in designing a collection for H&M, a high street chain known for accessible fashion.
Guests at the show were divided on the retail trend known as “masstige” — mass products with designer prestige.
“I think it’s demeaning. It’s a bandwagon that everyone seems to have jumped on, but I think that they should jump off it pretty quick because I don’t think it goes very far,” said Michael Roberts, the influential fashion and style editor of Vanity Fair magazine.
“The unsung designers who do design for the high street are quite good enough because they know their market. I see it just as a trend and I think it’s stupid,” he said.
Others saw designer collaborations with high street stores as an economic necessity.
“I think it’s absolutely an essential thing for a designer label to do these days, because at a designer price level you are reaching only a very small segment of the market,” said Hilary Alexander, fashion director of Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.
“There are a whole host of people out there, girls, young women on small salaries, who would adore to be able to buy into a little of the mystique of a designer label,” she added.
Viktor & Rolf made their name with outlandish creations such as mushroom-shaped clothes inspired by atomic explosions, but have been working to widen their appeal by launching fragrances with cosmetics giant L’Oreal.
The H&M collection, slated to go on sale on Nov. 9 in 250 stores, will include a silk-and-tulle bridal gown priced at a relatively down-to-earth euro 298 (US$379).
It was hard to find any designer showing on Monday that did not have some high street connection.
France’s Isabel Marant designed a collection for catalog retailer La Redoute as far back as 1998. She stuck to her philosophy of carefree dressing with belted linen tunics and rolled-up shorts that exposed plenty of well-toned thigh.
Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto has a long-running collaboration with German sportswear maker Adidas, but said he was in the mood for something more “elegant and avant-garde.”
His models paraded through the ornate auditorium of the Sorbonne university to the strains of Elvis Presley, wearing deconstructed morning coats and prom dresses with corsets unlaced in the back. Yamamoto’s wry comment on gender roles was filled with surreal grace
