The working classes are repressed and skint and are finally using the vote to make their voices heard and to take a stance against the intellectual elite and a world where manual labor is looked down upon while the suits are celebrated and rewarded, where instant vapid celebrity is valued over craft and hard work.
Which wouldn't generally provide a segue in to the very elite world of couture but the collection Viktor and Rolf presented was a celebration of the beauty of something clearly made by human hands. Strange, magical and idiocyncratic with a slight tinge of "fin de siecle" about it. As if ragged ghosts from the French revolution had wrapped themselves around the models just as they stepped on to the runway.
Couture is one of the last reaches of fashion where hands do all the work. The "petites mains" of the work rooms are the skilled builders who help the designer achieve their vision, they bring it to life and in this instance they breathed life back in to disused fabrics and clothes to create fresh beauty.
Re-birth. Re-naissance. Re-volt. Vive la revolution!
