Viktor and Rolf | Photo: Philip Riches

NEW YORK, United States — “We had big ambitions,” says Viktor Horsting on creating fashion house Viktor & Rolf with Rolf Snoeren. “From the very beginning we wanted to start very high,” he says, indicating the absolute apogee of couture elegance: “Start at the top, and everything else would fall into place after that. It was a very emotional ambition, not just in terms of the size of the business or wanting to be like a certain designer. It was more about fulfilling creative ambitions and working at the highest level possible.”

In 1993, the duo, known for their immaculate constructions and the pop-sensationalism of their shows, gave the world a glimpse of their aims with an underground presentation of their first collection in Paris, which won them the venerated Grand Prix de la Ville de Hyères. Seventeen years and nearly 50 collections later, Viktor & Rolf’s dramatic vision has itself become a sensation — the awards continue to roll in and in 2008, around the time both of the designers were celebrating their fortieth birthdays, their work was the subject of a retrospective at London’s esteemed Barbican Gallery.

Today, as they celebrate the five year anniversary of their wildly successful fragrance Flowerbomb with a rare trip to New York at the start of fashion week, the elegant gentlemen from the Netherlands say they finally have all the pieces in place to realize their vaulting ambition.

Flowerbomb is, in fact, an important and instructive window into the successes of the brand, says Snoeren, breakfasting in a West Village garden home bedecked with sherbet coloured flowers. “It proves that you can be creative and do well commercially,” he says. “Flowerbomb proves that you can turn anything into something beautiful. It is like a modern day weapon.”

The duo have previously stated their aim of reclaiming terrain for the republic of beauty. “Transformation,” Horsting adds, “is a very important point in our work.” With that in mind, the pair, who label themselves as “reflective” and “maybe analyzing too much,” say they “set out to work with a combination of perseverance, stubbornness and naiveté and just went on and on,” according to Horsting. “There wasn’t a blueprint, but I think we felt what was necessary, we felt the priorities. We go by gut feeling.”

“I think we were very trusting that if we did that,” Snoeren agrees, “and it works, the rest will come.” And come it has. In 2000 the house expanded to ready-to-wear, and in 2003 launch menswear line Monsieur. In 2006, Viktor & Rolf designed a special collection for the Swedish megastore H&M, broadening their appeal and reach. Subsequent collaborations have included work for L’Oreal, Dutch department store De Bijenkorf, luggage maker Samsonite and the champagne brand Piper-Heidsick — not to mention the duo’s striking costume designs for the opera, a jewelry line for crystal house Swarovski, couture eyelashes for Shu Uemura and a partridge in a pear tree.

These projects, Horsting says, “were very instinctive. We knew we had to do ready-to-wear, but we had no idea how to organise it all. But we knew it would be a logical follow up. We thought in a certain scale without knowing how to get there. We knew it wouldn’t be us organising it, we knew we would have to find a partner.” But through all the growth, the brand still maintains a succinct integrity and the designers have kept a clarity of vision that has served them well. Indeed, the label has a growing consumer base and their performances capture the pattering hearts of the fashion set who go wild for their theatrical showstoppers which have previously included guest performers like Tilda Swinton, Rufus Wainwright and, most recently, La Roux. But how? “It’s all about the details,” Snoeren says soberly.

That attention to detail has enabled Viktor & Rolf to get to a place where they can claim creative fulfillment, or, at least, satisfaction. This frees them up to turn their eyes of transformation upon the brand itself.

Enter Renzo Rosso, owner of Diesel and chairman of Only the Brave, who, in 2008, took a controlling stake in the company and announced a series of plans to expand the brand into new product lines and brick-and-mortar stores. The process of choosing a investment partner, which took two years of negotiations, Horsting says, came down to “a gut feeling combined with what is needed.” Snoeren adds, “after the success of Flowerbomb, we wanted to take the ready-to-wear to the next level.” Rosso, who the guys say is unique — a businessman who is also creative and would not interfere with their aesthetic and quality-control — appeared the perfect fit.

“It’s about opening stores, restructuring collections,” Snoeren says. “You can have a great show and be very good at it. But it’s a whole thing around it to make a business. It’s like a puzzle.” Forecasting the future he says, “We are kind of allergic to 5-year plans…” “But we are opening a store in Paris,” Horsting says, “and then New York.”

“For us, now,” Snoeren says, “it’s about building the business to it’s full potential.” Horsting adds, “creatively we are very happy, we’ve achieved many things and we have found a way of working that we love and we continue to do that. In terms of business we would love to develop more.”

“We feel we have to do that to become a real alternative for people to go somewhere that is a bit different,” Snoeren says. So, with Rosso’s wallet behind you and the creative carte blanche, do you have all the pieces you need? “Yes,” he says, “they are all there. It is a good feeling.”

Chris Wallace is an editor and writer based in New York. His work has appeared in Dossier Journal, i-D, Interview, and T.

NEW YORK, United States – Quoting Steven Kolb, executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, saying the format of showing the Fall 2009 collections this February is the “number one item on everyone’s agenda right now,” The Wall Street Journal‘s Heard on the Runway blog recently asked the question: “Will fashion shows survive the economy?”

To answer this question, it’s important to consider how fashion shows function in today’s media landscape. Increasingly, images and video from runway shows, captured by the established media, as well as a new generation of fashion bloggers wielding video-enabled camera phones, reach a global audience of fashion consumers, in close to realtime, on Style.com, YouTube and fashion blogs around the world.

As a result, today’s shows are not simply aimed at editors, buyers and other industry insiders. They have become remarkable vehicles for conjuring and transmitting the energy of a brand to end consumers.

Recessionary times require a rethink of the cost versus benefit calculation. Certainly this applies to fashion shows also. But tough economies also prompt new ideas. So far, the most popular answer has been to stage simpler “presentations” instead of elaborate runway shows. But the timing has never been better for designers to think outside the box and leverage the power of the internet to communicate their vision in a dynamic and cost-effective manner.

For Spring/Summer 2009, Victor & Rolf became the first major fashion brand to stage a web-only show, while online fashion retailer Net-a-Porter recently staged a mini-runway show featuring eight outfits from Alexander McQueen’s 2009 Pre-Spring collection. While they get top marks for innovation, simply taking the format of the runway show and recreating it online isn’t the only (or necessarily the most effective) way to harness the potential of the new medium.

Indeed, recent seasons have seen the rise of a groundbreaking new format: the online fashion film. Complementing less elaborate presentations, online fashion films have the potential to deliver the poetry and energy of a full-blown runway show, with motion and music, in a way that’s cost-effective and easily distributed.

For Autumn/Winter 2008, creative director Stefano Pilati, struggling to achieve profitability at Yves Saint Laurent, decided to skip the traditional runway show and present his menswear collection for Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche through a film broadcast on YSL’s website, YouTube and Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio.

A pioneer of the new format, SHOWstudio themselves recently released “Insensate,” an online short that brings to life the bewitching aesthetic magic of Gareth Pugh’s Autumn/Winter 2008 collection. But Prada was perhaps the first big brand to experiment with the new medium of online fashion film as a marketing tool that played an integral role in their seasonal advertising campaign. Their animated short “Trembled Blossoms,” based on the James Jean wallpaper that appeared in the campaign, depicts a cyber-woman’s journey through a CGI forest as she acquires looks from the Spring/Summer 2008 collection, as if by magic. Premiered at New York Fashion Week, the film created quite a buzz with both fashion insiders and a global audience on YouTube.

Even Chanel, arguably France’s premier fashion house, has been experimenting with online fashion film, launching a beautiful online short that highlights Coco Chanel’s fascination with Russia and the splendour of the tsars to accompany the recent launch of Chanel’s Paris-Moscou collection. And while brands like Chanel are unlikely to stop staging the kind of elaborate presentations that sometimes feel more like operas than mere runway shows, one thing’s for sure.

The ascendance of the online fashion film is a significant and growing trend that stands to get a boost from the current economic climate. Stay tuned.

Vikram Alexei Kansara is a digital strategist and writer based in New York.