VIKTOR HORSTING

DESIGNER/ARTIST/GLASSES-WEARER

TEXT BY PETER LYLE

PORTRAIT BY PHILLIP RICHES

Here at O:Man Towers, we wanted to mark the latest evidence of Viktor & Rolf's progress towards world domination in style. The Dutch design duo's brand new London outpost a "corner", which Viktor translates as a "small shop within a shop", in Harvey Nichols dedicated to their menswear line Monsieur - may not be a flashy, purpose-built flagship, but it is an example of the way the two 41-year-olds, originally known for their presentational brilliance, their high-concept couture and their smartly spectacular shows, have become a serious, unit-shifting, glob- ally-expanding retail force.

Our plan? We asked whether we could photograph and interview Viktor and then Rolf alone, in their customary environments, in the spirit of the lone-man-at-work logic of the section you're now reading. We were delighted when they agreed to make it happen in late February, just days before they were to show their autumn/winter womenswear, and we were intrigued when Rolf, whose second name is Snoeren, told us just before the shoot that he was "excited" about the plan they had hatched in conjunction with the photographer. If they were willing to go solo, we were more than happy to allow these celebrated artists to indulge their creative imaginations.

They did just that, as you can see from this picture and the one over the page, although we're pretty sure we're not clever enough to understand either completely. We assume it's part- nod to Ancient Greek sculpture and its evocation of the ideal male body, part radical counterstrike to fashion's notorious willingness to expose female flesh, and part an allusion to the way traditional tailoring is based on building out from the male body. Believe us, that's a convention that Rolf and Viktor take very seriously indeed.

"Ever since we started out," says Viktor Horsting, "we have happily respected the strengths of menswear - the relative focus on fabric, shape, detail. We try for a modern mix between casual and formal." Indeed, admirers of the incredible silhouettes of their womenswear, or the shows and installations with which V & R wowed the art world before being embraced by the fashion industry, have sometimes grumbled that their menswear is a little too sensible.

"We just noticed that we know what we want to wear," Horsting continues. "Like what we did for the next season, starting with the idea of the suit. We like the idea of working on masculine, iconic concepts and then experimenting within that. So for next winter, the basic question we started from was, 'What is a suit?'"

One wonders if the fact that they can wear the Monsieur line (they do; indeed, they were their own models when unveiling their debut men's collection in 2003) means there's ever a danger of it becoming overly practical and safe. "We do think about this," Viktor says, "because you always want to look good, and there are certain conventions in menswear, like tailored shoulders, that work. But yes, we have to keep in mind the image, not just the clothes."

But that doesn't mean there aren't new ideas - wearing your spectacles on your torso, for example. Asked to pick a totemic piece from the spring collection, Horsting recommends their "very nice sweatshirt with glasses. Both of us have always been wearing these glasses, and I suppose we're using them, in a little way, as an alternative logo - something more informal, to go with jeans." Or perhaps even your birthday suit.

ROLF SNOEREN

DESIGNER/AMSTERDAMMER/ARTIST

TEXT BY PETER LYLE

PORTRAIT BY PHILLIP RICHES

We may have got Rolf to talk to us without Viktor, but when it came to what defines menswear, we got exactly the same answer: rules and regulations. For all the sales surges and proliferation of designers and labels in the menswear realm since he and Horsting first showed a Monsieur collection eight years ago, Rolf Snoeren believes the fundamentals of the discipline are unchanged.

"The base is so strict," he says, that certain elements of a menswear look follow on from it, they "automatically happen. You find certain elements in all the collections - I can wear a jacket from five years ago with the new clothes... it's still easier for men than women, in that there are only so many possibilities with menswear, and then it just ends." The trick, he adds, is to balance tradition and innovation to the point where you "do something polished, but not old."

If that sounds a little imprecise, the pair's practical implementation of it is anything but. Their forthcoming winter collection, aired in an intimate January presentation in which they invited La Roux to sing, dressed her in their menswear, takes on the idea of the "suit", rigorously distilling it to "two pieces of clothing in one material." Suddenly, jackets, jogging pants, slacks, pleats, fabrics and possibilities are all territory for legitimate exploration.

The formal aspect of Viktor & Rolf's design approach was informed by their style-obsessed early lives in the Netherlands, where they were attracting attention for their own art and collections by their early 20s, having met at college. They say the city of Amsterdam, where the label has its headquarters, is "totally casual," ("nobody dresses up here"), and that their studied smartness was originally a kind of reaction to that.

In 2008, Viktor & Rolf entered into a deal with Diesel founder Renzo Rosso's conglomerate of fashion brands, None But the Brave. At the time, the duo explained it as a logical way of strengthening their label's reach and potential without compromising their creative control. Their increasing visibility and retail oomph since (after the new Harvey Nichols corner, a Paris store and further openings are in the pipeline) suggest it's paid off. "That's the best thing about it," says Snoeren, "we have total creative freedom, the way we did before, but we are working with a partner with a lot more know-how. The biggest changes are taking place behind the scenes."

Which means that they spend more time than ever away from their Amsterdam HQ - visiting new clothing factories in Italy, or their fragrance partner L'Oreal in Paris, for example. Have they ever thought it might be time to pack up and relocate to an international fashion capital? "We've been thinking so much about moving, or where we'd want to go," Snoeren says, "but in the end I think we like to be isolated instead of in the middle of it, then enter the fashion world when we want to.

"Also, we're very loyal. We've always been here and - though people leave and get other jobs sometimes, of course - we stick to a certain team. Or, for instance we've always worked with Inez and Vinoodh" - by which he of course means the top-end Dutch photography duo, surnamed van Lamsweerde and Matadin respectively. "We met each other in 1993, we were both in a show in Paris that Olivier Zahm from Purple had curated, and we became friends. That helps when you work together, but the real reason why we work with them is that we love their work, and their visual language fits our work."

It's a touching, old-fashioned, well-mannered tribute to loyalty and knowing one's roots that one would expect more from unreconstructed old-world menswear craftsmen than from a designer who rose to fame on the back of arch art and extravagant, unreal couture. But after a pause, Snoeren tempers his ode to staying in Amsterdam with a rather less loyal thought. "Plus, Amsterdam has the biggest airport in the world, near

to the city, so you can get away to anywhere you want pretty easily."

JOE MILLS

BARBER/RECORD COLLECTOR/ROCKER

TEXT BY PETER LYLE

PORTRAIT BY MICHAEL DONKIN

Barbershop, says Joe Mills "almost feels like a dirty word sometimes... or it had become this luxury, oak-clad Mayfair space, this one idea that kept being regurgitated. So when we started thinking about this place, I at least knew what I didn't want."

The hairdresser and sometime DJ is sat in Joe and Co, the men's hairdresser he recently opened in Greens Court, Soho, just round the corner from his established unisex salon The Lounge.

"I always wanted a barber's shop," he says. "I love doing guys' hair. I grew up in Margate in the 1980s and it was all flat-tops and quiffs, and that's still my passion. I came to London, worked in Soho through the '90s, had a great time doing that. Then as our first salon became established, it began to get loads more women customers and kind of softened-up."

Hence the new, men-only venue, which quietly opened last October, in a building that was previously a modern church. Mills set about making "some- thing really clean and modern."

The solution: a geometric, Mondrian-like blue-yellow colour scheme with storage in pale, barely- treated wood and steel, black-cushioned Belmont barber's chairs, which echo the firm's classic designs, but are lighter and more compact, and swivel round so hair can be washed more comfortably.

"The people here are all specialists in men's haircuts, and they're all very particular about what they use - a certain brand of clippers, for example. So it's about taking all those key elements, but putting a spin on them and making them right."

Mills himself still uses the same pair of £400 Japanese scissors he bought back in the beginning of his career. "When I first started and moved to London, they were my first pair of scissors that were decent, in about 1992. It was a real commitment, but you never need to sharpen them if you only cut hair - they're honed to sharpen themselves as they open and close. And once they're shaped to your hand, you don't want anybody else to use them.

Mills' own handsome quiff and close-trimmed back and sides evokes both the current rockabilly moment and the style tribes who bestrode the southeast England's seaside towns in his youth. "It was almost a contradiction itself, the hard rockabilly with the donkey jacket, 'cause you were talking about 15- and 16-year-old-boys bleaching their hair, buying hairspray, and blow-drying every morning to get a quiff."

Since opening Joe and Co, Mills has been surprised at how many men have got into a ritual of a weekly or fortnightly wet shave, having originally conceived the service as merely "a bit of an add-on," and speculates that it's become a treat precisely because most men now prefer to grow slight stubble rather than scrape away at their jowls each morning. Beyond the endurance of the rockabilly quiff, Mills also notes the emergence of a wave of "curly hair, a lot of texture going on, almost '80s- like. Weird Science - we were talking about that as a reference the other day. It's going to be a lot more fun this year. People like Aaron Johnson growing their hair out - a little bit longer, a little bit softer."

That could almost be the title of an Ibiza chillout CD, which is a clunking segue into the fact that many of you will remember Mills as a star name from the glory days of 1990s superstar DJs. He remembers them fondly too, but explains that the sideline didn't ever threaten to overshadow his primary interest in cutting hair. "In '91 I was working in Fish on D'Arblay Street in Soho, so we had Black Market Records, Duffer of St George and Fish all it one road and it became a cool place to go to get your haircut. Then a mate sold me a pair of decks and I started going out raving, and I DJ'd every Saturday for five or six years after cutting hair and I loved it, it was a great time. The DJ thing came about because, with rave, people didn't want to play records; everyone was on the dance- floor wanting to get trashed."

He still likes to pick the tunes at Joe and Co - a rare soul classic here, some Johnny Cash there. "It's called Joseph Mills' selfindulgent mix - all the stuff we wouldn't play round the corner at The Lounge."