Viktor & Rolf on strike

Paris, 1996. After Viktor & Rolf's L'Apparence du Vide, a collection of 5 gold lamé garments with corresponding "shadows" in black organza (exhibited at the Galerie Patricia Dorfmann), had received virtually no attention from the press, the duo, also due to lack of funds that practically always goes hand in hand with emerging designers, decided against releasing a collection for the next season. Instead, they opted for an unabashedly self-promotional, yet witty "campaign": they produced a poster of a girl carrying a protest sign saying "Viktor & Rolf on strike" and sent it to fashion editors, clearly demonstrating their discontent with the industry. The campaign also extended to the streets; the posters could be seen everywhere in Paris during fashion week (perfect timing).

"The strike was not aimed at the French fashion establishment in particular. It was directed at 'the fashion system' in general. We felt frustrated and couldn't seem to find our entrance into fashion. We were creating collections every season but on such a small and home-grown level that they stood in no relation to our ambitions. We simply didn't know how to realize these. Our ideas about fashion were just that: ideas. We were completely disconnected from the reality of the industry, from the market."

I'm reading a book on V&R and this really stuck with me because it's an experience everyone seems to have to go through to succeed unless you're incredibly lucky and immediately fall into the right constellations. Now that they've established themselves as innovative and well-known designers and no longer live in a shoebox apartment in Paris's 20^th district, it's hard to imagine that once nobody cared about Viktor and Rolf. The fact that their "desperate" campaign didn't receive much media attention is somewhat ironic, but it went down in history for its sincerity. On top of that, the idea can be easily adapted by anyone, so it'll always be relevant. Who knows whether the results of the campaign would be as fruitless today as they were 14 years ago.


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