Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren are shutting down Viktor & Rolf’s ready-to-wear operation, reports WWD. The Dutch designers will now concentrate on couture, fragrances, and licensed businesses. Jean Paul Gaultier assumed a similar business strategy just last season when he announced he was leaving behind RTW to focus on couture.
The designers told WWD that the decision was made jointly with majority shareholder OTB Group. Renzo Rosso, president of the OTB Group, said the move was “a strategic decision to position the Viktor & Rolf brand in the highest luxury segment of fashion.” After 14 years, the designers will present their last Fall/Winter 2015 womenswear collection this Paris fashion week, but will be absent from the runway.
Viktor & Rolf’s Spring 2015 RTW collection featured a color palette “veering from candy-colored to acid-toned…a certain abstracted muscularity and a kind of bursting energy in the sculpted tops and dresses,” wrote Style.com’s Maya Singer. Hopefully the designers will instill that energy into their couture collections next year.
—Austen Rosenfeld, Style.com
