Forget the boogeyman or things that go bump at night. As far as Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren are concerned, the scariest thing that can come knocking at your door is change.
“I think we started thinking about Dracula, [especially] the old Hollywood film version, because it’s a powerful symbol of fear of change in society and it felt appropriate at this moment,” Horsting said backstage.
The cinematic depiction of the vampire, ensconced in a too-tight suit that pulled the body into a permanent shrug made them think back to one of the silhouettes from their very first couture collection and “its shoulders up to here,” as the designer put it, gesturing somewhere around his ear.
The golden age of film was alluded to in the color palette, heavy on black and white, save for sophisticated hues of lilacs, brown and yellow or a floral print that the duo muted with a layer of dark tulle.
With embellishments pared back, save for a handful of upcycled fabric flowers scattered on a few looks, the focus was squarely on the cuts.
Tuxedos, suits, demure dresses and evening gowns were stretched vertically, their elongated proportion supported by lightweight corsets and forcing the body into a rigid posture.
Before taking their turn on the runway, the models walked behind translucent panels, the light behind them projecting monstrously distorted versions of their silhouettes to the audience, claws and all.
When they appeared at the far end of the runway, gingerly inching forward, they looked like a post-lockdown crowd venturing cautiously outside, heads buried in their shoulders in a protective gesture.
Earlier, Snoering pointed out the structures could be removed. Doing so would create the impression of being swamped in these clothes, like children in adult-sized items. Even so, it was hard to miss that the duo cut terrific clothes, especially of the tailored variety.
The anticlimactic near-normality of these outfits was exactly the point the couturier duo was trying to make: any change can look scary from afar but when you look closely, it’s just a new kind of normal.
