Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren celebrate their 20th anniversary in business this year, an occasion marked by a new showroom, a new store opening in Paris this fall, and a return to haute couture after 13 years away. The event will not be marked by a men s runway show because, as they said, "For menswear, it isn t always necessary on the runway. It doesn t always work." So Monsieur, their menswear line, was banished (like so many rebel children before it) to school: For Spring, Horsting and Snoeren worked a bad-schoolboy theme. Badges appliquéd to jackets announced his matriculation at Viktor Rolf College (est. 1992), though college prep seemed closer to the mark. Their teenage avatars weren t above slicing the bottoms off their raw-edged blazers or sewing punky patches onto their jeans for weekends off campus.
The designers made mischief with tailored pieces split down the middle—the front, pinstriped suiting fabric; the back, stretch jersey—and by sewing tie silk onto lapels. Their imagined school even had a Latin motto printed on shirts: Actis Virtus, "Virtue in Deeds." Twenty years in fashion is probably long enough to apply that kind of pat on the back, even if it s hard to shake the feeling that the two still cast their lot more with the bad schoolboy than his virtuous headmaster.
