Ballerinas for Bonbon. Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren are launching a new perfume. The ad campaign for Bonbon was projected onto the backdrop at the end of their show tonight; it stars a seated Edita Vilkeviciute, her naked body painted in pink bows the same color and shape as the fragrance bottle, which sits perched on her lap.
In a sweet little piece of cross-promotion, the designers cast members of the Dutch National Ballet as models, dressing them in leotard-tight dresses in nude shades of latex that looked remarkably like real skin, some of which were hand-painted with trompe l'oeil tattoos of ruffles, birds, or those bows. In a week when Schiaparelli was back on the Couture calendar after sixty-odd years, Horsting and Snoeren were the ones to embrace surrealism, draping folds of latex from tattooed bird's beaks and bows. One short-sleeve asymmetric-hem dress looked like a high-cut bodysuit with a skirt slung over just one hip, leaving the other exposed. What was rubber and what was flesh? You couldn't tell. It was the kind of head game that the Dutch duo has always loved.
In recent years, the received wisdom on Couture was that it was basically just a promotional device for a brand's perfumes. Viktor & Rolf proved the cliché true. Our guess is they got some perverse pleasure out of that.
