By Sharon Feiereisen  

The avant-garde Dutch design team behind Viktor & Rolf, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, announced that they will be presenting their spring/summer 2009 collection on their Web site, therfore eschewing runway presentation during Paris Fashion Week.

The online showcase will start on October 2^nd and is set to depict an actual show filmed in the Grand Salon of the Viktor & Rolf virtual house. The Web presentation will employ the latest technologies and allow for site visitors to access the backstage area, to see hair, makeup, and fittings.  

The new collection is titled “Funny Face,” and the designers noted that this “is a take on what a fashion show might be in the future,” thus echoing what The New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn wrote a few months ago in a piece titled “My Invitation Isn’t in the Mail."

In the piece Horyn, after being notified that she will no longer be invited to Giorgio Armani’s runway shows after making what they deemed to be “unnecessarily sarcastic comments about his friends and family in a review of his last couture show,” wonders if now with runway collection being on view online mere hours after a show takes place whether designers will soon skip a runway show and bring clothing directly over the internet to the public.