Ballerinas for Bonbon. Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren are launching a new perfume. The ad campaign for Bonbon was projected onto the backdrop at the end of their show tonight; it stars a seated Edita Vilkeviciute, her naked body painted in pink bows the same color and shape as the fragrance bottle, which sits perched on her lap.
In a sweet little piece of cross-promotion, the designers cast members of the Dutch National Ballet as models, dressing them in leotard-tight dresses in nude shades of latex that looked remarkably like real skin, some of which were hand-painted with trompe l oeil tattoos of ruffles, birds, or those bows. In a week when Schiaparelli was back on the Couture calendar after sixty-odd years, Horsting and Snoeren were the ones to embrace surrealism, draping folds of latex from tattooed bird s beaks and bows. One short-sleeve asymmetric-hem dress looked like a high-cut bodysuit with a skirt slung over just one hip, leaving the other exposed. What was rubber and what was flesh? You couldn t tell. It was the kind of head game that the Dutch duo has always loved.
In recent years, the received wisdom on Couture was that it was basically just a promotional device for a brand s perfumes. Viktor Rolf proved the cliché true. Our guess is they got some perverse pleasure out of that.
