Avant-garde fashion by design duo Viktor&Rolf on view at the High
Atlanta entrepreneur Lauren Amos made a thrilling announcement for fashion fans this past spring. Under the aegis of the Lauren Amos Fashion Project, she has bestowed a multimillion-dollar gift to the High Museum, where she serves on the board, to fund fashion exhibitions and a new curatorial position.
Owner of the Little Five Points streetwear shop Wish ATL and the high fashion boutique ANT/DOTE, Amos has become something of Atlanta’s couture-decked fairy godmother championing fashion as something just as worthy of museum exhibitions as a painting or photography show.
The first exhibition under that initiative is “Viktor&Rolf. Fashion Statements,” a retrospective centered on the avant-garde Dutch fashion designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren at the High Museum. It was curated by the team’s longtime friend, Montreal-based Thierry-Maxime Loriot.
“What I’ve come to love about Viktor and Rolf, especially through my friendship with Thierry-Maxime Loriot and seeing how they work, is how they balance discipline with play,” said Amos. “Their shows can feel so dramatic, even severe at times, but in person they’re warm, funny and so human.”
Horsting and Snoeren met in the 1980s as students at Arnhem Art Academy (now ArtEZ University of the Arts). As their brand has evolved, they’ve become known for their cheeky take on fashion and for the integration of commentary and pop culture into their work.
Loriot notes that the design duo’s mix of humor and social critique has made them into an instantly recognizable brand. “And I think this is very strong for any artist, whether it’s a painter, a sculptor or movie director, you know, to recognize the signature.”
“They don’t just design ‘wearble clothing’, they build entire worlds, these healthy theatricals that feel like pure fantasy. Yet everything is done with the rigor of true couture,” said Amos. “That combination — imagination without restriction, anchored by craft — is what makes them artists in the truest sense. You recognize their work instantly because it’s witty, dramatic and intelligent, but always executed with unbelievable precision.”
The pair describe themselves as “fashion artists” rather than fashion designers. Both are also art collectors, Snoeren of contemporary art and Horsting of late 19th and early 20th century paintings and ceramics.
Speaking over a Zoom call, the exceedingly charming Horsting, occasionally joined by his dog Vicky (“the second,” Horsting adds), noted, “We’re different than other designers, in the sense that we kind of use fashion as a tool or as a medium to express ourselves.”
One example of their approach, said Horsting, is a gorgeous coral-colored tulle dress featured in the High show, the kind of hyperfeminine gown Grace Kelly might have worn. But in Viktor&Rolf’s hands, this look from their “Cutting Edge Couture” collection takes a step in a Looney Tunes direction.
The duo embellished the frothy gown with enormous holes, as if a cartoon cannon had blown chunks out of the dress. “We love glamour, we love fashion and we’re very interested in these kinds of stereotypical garments, but then we want to turn them upside down,” explained Horsting.
The High exhibition will feature garments spanning 30 years of the duo’s provocative designs beginning with the launch of their fashion house in 1993. Divided into eight chapters, the exhibition tells the story of Viktor&Rolf’s work in a narrative sense instead of chronologically, and it features more than 100 couture designs.
The exhibition also incorporates art by photographers Cindy Sherman and Andreas Gursky to show the connections between fashion and contemporary art. Projections from Montreal-based visual effects house Rodeo FX help convey the theatricality of Viktor&Rolf’s vision. And one of the more unusual elements of “Fashion Statements” is a collection of Victorian-style porcelain dolls with human hair that the designers dress in tiny replicas of their designs. In the gift shop, visitors can take home some of the team’s creative vision in the form of two perfumes: Flowerbomb Extreme and Flowerbomb Tiger Lily.
The show will include nods to Atlanta fashion influencers, too. The dress from Viktor&Rolf’s “Scissorhands” collection worn by Amos to the 2025 Met Gala will be on view. Also in the mix: fashion photography commissioned from the Atlanta-based creative studio AB+DM, featuring the talents of Morehouse grad Ahmad Barber and Georgia State University grad Donté Maurice.
Among the collections represented in the exhibit is their 2015 “Wearable Art” collection incorporating 19th century Dutch-inspired artworks and gilt frames, and their 2023 “Late Stage Capitalism Waltz” collection that literally turned fashion on its head by inverting gowns and having models walk the runway wearing dresses upside down, sideways, hither and yon.
Also included is 2019’s “Fashion Statements” collection of confectionary tulle gowns in hard candy colors embellished with phrases such as “No,” or “No Photos Please” and “I’m Not Shy I Just Don’t Like You.” The series arose out of the team’s frustration with fashion’s relentless cycle, said Horsting.
“There was a moment when we were kind of fed up with fashion and the fact that the pace is so fast,” he said. “So, we did this collection around the word ‘no,’ because we had to create another collection. And all that kept coming up was the word ‘no’ — like, ‘Oh no.’ We said to ourselves, OK, instead of denying it, let’s embrace it, and let’s use it and turn it into a collection.”
In that way, Horsting admitted, their design process is like therapy. “We work through our emotions by creating something, and by doing that, we get it out of our systems.”
The impetus for the exhibition, said Loriot, was to make the designers’ work accessible to an audience beyond the celebrities and superrich who sit in the front row of international fashion shows.
“A lot of people don’t have access to haute couture,” said Loriot. “It’s easy to see a painting from Picasso, but to see a haute couture dress from Viktor&Rolf,” noted Loriot, not so much.
“For me it was important to have a democratic approach to it,” he said. “What is interesting to me is to have a new generation to understand what it is.”
With so many people opting for private experiences like in-home streaming and shopping rather than public engagement, the need to create exhibitions that spark conversation is vital, said Loriot, especially in the present climate when different points of view are often viewed with suspicion.
“I think it’s really important in times of censorship go deep on topics,” he said, “because fashion can be also the mirror of society, about social movements, about values.”
With so much negativity in the world, creativity offers a balm and a remedy, with galleries and museums serving as welcome respites. “Creation, to our minds, is about positivity, and it can be complex, but we always strive for beauty and for an uplifting, elevated message,” said Horsting. “So in that sense, it’s about hope.”
ART EVENT
“Viktor&Rolf. Fashion Statements.” Through Feb. 8, 2026. $23.50, High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 770-733-4400, high.org.
