Viktor & Rolf jumping off the ready-to-wear bandwagon

By

Dominique Muret

Published
Feb 3, 2015

The ready-to-wear adventure is coming to an end for Viktor & Rolf. Dutch designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren have decided to discontinue their women's ready-to-wear line launched in 2000, the House announced in a press release.

The result: the one and only Viktor & Rolf flagship store in the world, inaugurated at the end of 2013 in Paris at 370 Rue Saint-Honoré, will be closed in January 2016. The last ready-to-wear collection will be the one from the fall-winter 2015 season. It will be presented in March during Paris Fashion Week but there won't be a runway show.

This decision was motivated in part by the designers' creative need to "return to their roots" by turning their focus back to haute couture, which they started out with in 1998. And for another part by the desire of Renzo Russo's OTB Group, the majority shareholder of Viktor & Rolf since 2008, "to position the brand in the highest luxury segment of fashion."

The label will thus put all its focus on haute couture, with the next collection to show on the runway in Paris in July, and on licences: perfumes, which it launched with L’Oréal in 2002, and eyewear, which debuted this past summer with French group Paget.

Founded in 1993, the duo reputed for their off-the-wall and conceptual side started off in haute couture in 1998. Their first passion, which they came back to in fall-winter 2014/15.

The label is currently sold at the Viktor & Rolf monobrand store in Paris and is distributed through some one hundred multi-brand stores. The ready-to-wear line was produced by Staff International, the production company from OTB.