Inspired by Balenciaga and often compared to brands like Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood, the Dutch fashion label Viktor&Rolf is celebrating its 25th anniversary year with the release of a massive new coffee-table book, Viktor&Rolf: Cover Cover. It weighs eight pounds and contains 520 folded pages, chronicling a quarter-century of the brand’s conceptual haute couture.
Designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren are known for creating wearable art: gowns ornamented with picture frames, massive hats of straw, and one collection made entirely from leftover fabric. The book’s unique construction by graphic designer Irma Boom is meant to mimic Viktor&Rolf’s dramatic treatment of collars — which are often layered — as well as a 1999 collection that was inspired by Russian nesting dolls, featuring a model wrapped in nine layers of haute couture clothing on a rotating platform.
Of more than 400 photos shown in the book, including runway images and design sketches, many of the photos were printed as photo negatives, like an X-Ray, to reflect Viktor&Rolf’s focus on reinvention. Scroll below for a look inside.
Viktor&Rolf: Cover Cover will be published by Phaidon on July 4 to coincide with the designers’ Paris couture show. A retrospective exhibition will be on view at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands until September 30, 2018.