The art of showing off

By SUSANNAH FRANKEL

What is the function of a catwalk show? The medium was, of course, designed to inform those who care about such things - buyers, fashion editors, and general hangers-on - what the world will be wearing six months down the line. However, such a restrictive view is old-fashioned these days. The catwalk show is also a vital marketing tool. Its job is not only to sell clothes but also a label's image and, on the back of that, accessories, and beauty and grooming products - sales of which, almost invariably, form the bulk of the fashion business.

On a more profound level, and in only the most talented hands, a show, like the clothes included therein, will also be a reflection of our times. It may be thought-provoking, raising questions on the role of women, and indeed men, in contemporary society and, more specifically, their relationship with their clothes.

Very occasionally, a catwalk show will offer up all of these things in a perfectly balanced way. In this case, the audience won't feel that they are at a straightforward clothing presentation - which, with up to 10 collections to view a day, can become a little boring. Neither will they resent the fact that they are being bludgeoned into submission by a hugely powerful marketing machine, hell-bent on flogging the latest must-have handbag. In the best of all possible catwalk worlds, the mise-en -scene, hair, make-up and the concept that binds them all together will transport even the most fashion-weary to a different and very special place. Such was the case with Viktor & Rolf's spring/summer 2005 collection shown in Paris earlier this month.

Viktor & Rolf's pedigree is such that they are more equipped than most to offer up such an all-inclusive package. At the start of their career, just over a decade ago now, the Dutch designers showed a mini-collection of clothes designed for a particularly diminutive doll and with it an accompanying ad campaign and fragrance - in a bottle that couldn't be opened, neatly enough. They said at the time that their decision to work in such a way was more a question of limited finance than a comment on the industry as a whole. It is perhaps unsurprising, however, that the fruits of their labour were shown not on the Paris catwalks, but in an art gallery in Amsterdam, instead.

Since that time, Viktor & Rolf have given the world a collection in which exclusively black clothing was shown against a black backdrop and on models whose faces, bodies and hair had been painted black. The following season they did the same thing, only in white. During one particularly memorable haute couture season, Viktor & Rolf showed their entire collection on a single model - Maggie Rizer - piling one garment after another on top of her slender frame until she was positively dwarfed by it all.

Viktor & Rolf's latest offering unveiled not only their clothing collection for spring/summer 2005, but alsotheir first bona fide fragrance, called Flowerbomb. It is available next spring, is decidedly pink and sugary and comes in a glass bottle shaped like a (pink and sugary?) hand grenade. Once again, the first half of the show was all black - something of an obsession, clearly - featuring clothing that blended the bourgeois with the sluttish. This was a look made all the more fierce by the fact that each outfit was accessorised with shiny, black crash helmets. And then the (flower) bomb dropped. Following a minor explosion - one wouldn't want to cause fashion apoplexy, after all - the stage set rotated to reveal a tableau vivant of models dressed in very similar clothing, only this time all in pink to match their rosy faces.

It was one of the most cleverly choreographed comments on people's preconceptions of women's clothing the world has ever seen, from the black, belted, leather flasher's mac that opened the show to the dress that was nothing more than a huge pink ribbon that closed it. "Flowerbomb" boomed the soundtrack throughout, until the designers appeared in a torrent of pink petals to
take their bows. The backdrop in this particular instance? The forthcoming Flowerbomb advertising campaign which, this time round, is very much a commercial reality.

As far as show titles are concerned, respect is due to John Galliano who called his spring/summer 2005 collection: "Too Rich to Walk". Galliano's girls, one suspects, are these days a little on the precious side for anything but limousine travel and, let's face it, a girl could get into considerable trouble travelling on the tube in a ball gown, fur-covered army boots and a blossom-strewn flower-pot hat.

How does a famous face escape the limelight? At a dinner following the Chanel ready-to-wear show, at which Nicole Kidman was duly mobbed by paparazzi (and don't you just know how she feels), the new face of No 5 shared her secrets. "I just put on a baseball cap and wear my glasses," she opined. Greta Garbo she most certainly ain't.

- INDEPENDENT