Viktor & Rolf’s designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren helped celebrate Wednesday night’s opening of a retrospective of their work at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

More than 100 examples of their designs are on view in “Viktor & Rolf. Fashion Statements,” which highlights the Dutch designers’ ability over 30-plus years to create haute couture that challenges what constitutes art. The exhibition is set up in nine chapters — “Fashion Artists,” “Russian Dolls,” “Fashion Statements,” “The Dolls,” “Zen Garden,” “Performing Fashion,” “Viktor & Rolf on Stage” and “Upcycling Couture.” Pleased with the symmetry of “Viktor & Rolf. Fashion Statements” and the welcome response they are receiving, the pair spoke with WWD Thursday afternoon.

As for what jumps out at the pair seeing the retrospective, Snoeren said, “How hard we worked — how much we did. Also, there is a sense of gratitude that we’re still here and that we’re still best friends.”

Horsting added, “That we’re here in the United States with our very first big exhibition is very special. It makes you humble.”

While the exhibition is about Viktor & Rolf’s brand and their work, it is not a brand-sponsored show.

Snoeren added, “Walking through the exhibition, you see that sometimes the collections are a little more romantic. Somehow the mood changes, but you see the elements that we work with are always the same. It’s nice to see that continuation.”

Having just shown the Viktor & Rolf ready-to-wear collection in Paris last week, the pair said their team, as well as the High Museum and the exhibition’s curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot worked on the exhibition “very intensely.” The fact that the designers and curator had coordinated on the exhibition before, as it was previously staged in Munich, helped to lighten the load.

With fashion-themed exhibitions increasingly gaining interest at museums and cultural institutions in world capitals, the High Museum’s opening in Atlanta is significant, since secondary cities are trying to follow that lead. Snoeren said, “It comes down to what museums have the budgets to do it. The High Museum had a big sponsor, Lauren Amos, so they are able to do these things. Fashion exhibitions are quite costly. It’s also very rewarding, when a show like this travels.”

Earlier this year, Amos, a longtime board member and owner of the speciality store Antidote, made a multimillion-dollar donation to fund fashion exhibitions. Holding the exhibition in Georgia also offers “a pull factor on a national level,” Horsting said. “With social media, the information will get dispersed.”

Visiting Atlanta for the first time, the duo noted how hot, humid and friendly the city is. On the heels of having received “quite positive” reviews for their rtw return, the designers will hold a trunk show at Antidote on Friday. The designers’ reentry has involved reorganizing how their collections are made with much more of an in-house approach, which keeps everything closer to them.

All in all though, the fashion world is inspiring them today, they said. “We find fascinating — the rules, the hierarchy, the shows. It’s something that inspires us to design,” Snoeren said.

As for the changing of the guard at some of the major luxury houses, “That is fascinating as well — how that works, the attention it gets and thinking about our own place in the system. We see ourselves as people who have one foot in the fashion system and one foot out of it,” he said.

Horsting added, “We’re starting to feel like the last of the Mohicans. We’re one of the few founders of a brand that are also still connected to our brand.”

While what makes shoppers spend is an eternal question, he suggested originality, authenticity and the desire to have something that you are the only one, or among the few, that has it. There also needs to be a personal connection to whatever you buy — something that triggers a desire. “There’s so much that doesn’t happen easily.”

Asked if there was anything they wished people understood more about their work, the designers laughed. All in all, their strategy is to be complex to demonstrate how things can be several things at once. Snoeren said, “Sometimes that complexity can stand in the way of…”

“Appreciation,” offered Horsting.

Snoeren continued, “You know an audience taps into a certain layer in your humor or…in the end, the complexity is sometimes hard to understand.”

Agreeing that the “beauty is in the depth,” he added, “Yes, and the mystery.”

The ever-shrinking attention span of the world at large is widely known. “We all have shorter attention spans, including myself,” Snoeren said.

Horsting added, “Yes, but we all want to be stimulated and challenged to find something new and authentic. I tend to think that it’s our job to be clear. It’s our job to communicate and to reach that audience. I’d sooner blame myself than the audience.”

Looking ahead, the pair will be judging a contest in Hyères, and then they will be off to Doha in Qatar for a Fashion Trust Arabia event. There’s also the next Viktor & Rolf couture show to prepare for in January.