Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren celebrate their 20th anniversary in business this year, an occasion marked by a new showroom, a new store opening in Paris this fall, and a return to haute couture after 13 years away. The event will not be marked by a men's runway show because, as they said, "For menswear, it isn't always necessary on the runway. It doesn't always work." So Monsieur, their menswear line, was banished (like so many rebel children before it) to school: For Spring, Horsting and Snoeren worked a bad-schoolboy theme. Badges appliquéd to jackets announced his matriculation at Viktor & Rolf College (est. 1992), though college prep seemed closer to the mark. Their teenage avatars weren't above slicing the bottoms off their raw-edged blazers or sewing punky patches onto their jeans for weekends off campus.
The designers made mischief with tailored pieces split down the middle—the front, pinstriped suiting fabric; the back, stretch jersey—and by sewing tie silk onto lapels. Their imagined school even had a Latin motto printed on shirts: Actis Virtus, "Virtue in Deeds." Twenty years in fashion is probably long enough to apply that kind of pat on the back, even if it's hard to shake the feeling that the two still cast their lot more with the bad schoolboy than his virtuous headmaster.
