In bed with Viktor and Rolf

"This is our favourite thing we have ever done in our entire life," says Rolf Snoeren, who, with Viktor Horsting, forms the design team Viktor & Rolf. Despite the emotional content of the words, his delivery is determinedly deadpan.

We are standing in the cavernous space that is the Barbican Art Gallery, which has been transformed by the two Dutch designers into a 6m-high, three-storey doll's house, part-English stately home, part-turn-of-the-20th-century department store in flavour. The installation is the centrepiece of the designers' first London show, and is peopled with no less than 55 Viktor & Rolf-clad dolls, each of them just 2ft high and only recently unwrapped from their polythene packaging, having travelled all the way from the Viktor & Rolf atelier in Amsterdam, where they and their clothes have been lovingly attended to for the past year or more.

"For us, this is a very special moment," adds Horsting, again with a lack of modulation reminiscent of Absurdist theatre. "When you look at the rooms, you can see that the detailing is different in each one. For example, for the folklore collection we have created a slightly folkloristic room; for the There's No Business Like Show Business collection, there's more of a Hollywood feel, but it's very subtle. There's a Gothic room, an upside-down room..."

The dolls are made entirely by hand in the traditional manner, their heads created by a Belgian master-craftsman. "The heads are baked five times," Horsting says with pride, apparently relishing the precise and somewhat macabre nature of the process. Each is named after and styled to resemble the model who originally wore their outfit. Here is the black, New Look-line cocktail dress modelled by a scaled-down Devon Aoki. There is a miniature of the duchesse-satin bridal gown Viktor & Rolf designed for Mabel Wisse Smit on the occasion of her wedding to the Dutch Prince Johan Friso in 2004, its train (the full-sized version is 10ft long) festooned with 250 bows.

Where possible, the dolls' clothes have been made with exactly the same fabrics as the originals that inspired them. In other cases – where lace is used, for example, or the surface is printed – it has been recreated by the Viktor & Rolf studio from scratch. "We had to find a way to translate everything to fit a smaller size," says Horsting. "It was all very intricately done. The dolls' faces are hand-painted with exactly the same make-up as in the actual show, and their hair is the same also."

"We realised that using regular dolls' wigs wouldn't work," Snoeren continues, "because the hair used for dolls is different from human hair. So we used human hair, hand-knotted and dyed to exactly the same colour as the model's hair in the show. We employed a full-time hairdresser to do it. He's over there." And sure enough, a stylist pores over one doll in particular, attending to her tresses as we speak.

Only adding to the sweetly surreal, if a little sinister, feel is the fact that, in rooms on each side of the installation, 6ft doubles of the dolls can be seen, organised once again into collections, and with the shows in which the garments first appeared projected on to the back wall. Once the small dolls have been looked at, viewers are invited to find their big sisters and enter into their world, which is larger than life-size. "It's a bit like Alice," says Horsting.

"Viktor & Rolf's love of extreme form – the sculptural qualities of the clothes, and the theatricality they bring to their work – makes it great to exhibit," says Jane Alison, senior curator at the Barbican and the woman responsible for overseeing the show. The designers' conceptual approach, equally, makes them perfect museum fodder. "They work in a kind of hybrid zone between art and fashion," says Alison. "It's Warholian, in a way. They comment on the aspirational nature of fashion, critique it, but at the same time revere everything about it. That's a very interesting position to take."

Viktor Horsting was born on 27 May 1969, and Rolf Snoeren on 19 December that same year, in Geldrop and Dongen, in the Netherlands, respectively. Both sketched and painted from an early age, and shared a sense of alienation from their environment, from schooldays onwards. As teenagers, they were drawn to the photography of Guy Bourdin and the work of Karl Lagerfeld, then newly installed at the house of Chanel.

They met while studying fashion at the Arnem Academy of Art and Design, from which they graduated in 1992. "We met in 1988 when we were applying to study," they state in the catalogue that accompanies the new show. "We then became good friends. We felt the same drive and ambition and, somehow, a personal connection that we could not yet define. We just really liked each other and enjoyed each other's company.

"Both of us were away from home for the first time, living by ourselves, doing what we liked to do instead of attending a boring high school. For the first time, we were in an environment where being openly gay was a possibility. Our tastes, style and ambition were on the same level. We seemed to be attracted to fashion in a similar way. Of course, there is a process of discovery, but we recognised a similar sensibility right away. It is as if a part of our core is made out of the same material."

Horsting and Snoeren have long been compared to Gilbert & George, and that is not surprising. They dress formally and almost identically, finish each other's sentences, and work, they always say, as one. "If we hadn't done it together we would never have done it," Horsting confirms. "We hardly ever fight. We're very Dutch. We're very consensus-minded. If there's an idea that we don't agree on, then it's simple – it's not there yet."

Neither are the designers averse to incorporating themselves into their collections. When they launched their menswear line Monsieur, in 2003, they modelled the first show themselves, and in 2000 joined a cast of professionals for an all-singing, all-dancing womenswear extravaganza, for which they went so far as to learn to tap dance.

Rolf: We wanted to do the whole show.

Viktor: But then we had lessons and realised that 20 seconds was difficult enough.

Rolf: And that 15 minutes was out of the question.

Straight out of college, Horsting and Snoeren moved to Paris, basing themselves in a tiny apartment in the French fashion capital – Horsting's father drove them there in his car piled up with all their worldly possessions. "We just thought, 'Let's go to Paris and be fashion designers'," Horsting has since said. "It was all so open back then, which was frightening but also invigorating."

In April 1993, and by that time a creative partnership working under their first names, Viktor & Rolf, they won the Prix de la Presse, Prix du Jury and Prix de la Ville at the prestigious Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in Hyères, in southern France, for a collection of oversized coats and ball gowns crafted out of old shirts, and a giant trouser suit with elongated crotch and sleeves. "The extreme silhouettes and multiple layers, concealing and disfiguring the wearer's body, express the alienation we felt in the city of fashion," Horsting remembers, and while their work today is obviously a rather more sophisticated affair, the shows themselves continue to focus on the expression of a message, be it emotional, cerebral or both, over and above the selling of obviously commercial clothes.

"The pieces in the show tell the story," Horsting explains, "and those are not necessarily the most wearable pieces. They are show pieces, couture pieces." So if, in a show, a jacket or shirt comes in 15 identical, carefully graded layers, in the showroom there will be a jacket or shirt with, say, three lapels. If a garment is stuffed with rainbow-coloured balloons for a show, in the showroom the same piece will be draped where the "stuffing" has been removed – literally deflated.

Viktor & Rolf's love of theatre is enhanced by the fact that designers have, in the past, invited the actress Tilda Swinton to model their clothes – she was joined on the catwalk by professional models all styled to look just like her – and commissioned live soundtracks courtesy of both Tori Amos and Rufus Wainwright, whose crooning accompanied two male ballroom dancers waltzing in Viktor & Rolf-designed tailcoats. It's an extremely clever formula, and one that makes the conventional runway presentation seem about as interesting as waiting for a bus.

As fledgling designers in the early Nineties, Horsting and Snoeren both served apprenticeships with Jean Colonna and with the great Belgian designer Martin Margiela, who continues to influence their work to this day.

They created their own garments after-hours. When they ran out of time – and, indeed, money – they sought attention in less-than-predictable ways, on one occasion putting up fly-posters of a photocopied magazine all over Paris, the cover of which proclaimed: "Viktor & Rolf on strike!"

"The strike was not aimed at the French fashion establishment in particular. It was directed at the fashion system in general," they argue. "We felt frustrated and couldn't seem to find our entrance into fashion. We were creating collections every season, but on such a small and home-grown level that it stood in no relation to our ambitions. We simply didn't know how to realise these. Our ideas about fashion were just that: ideas. We were completely disconnected from the reality of the industry, from the market."

In October 1996, the designers expressed this mindset more intensely. Launch, shown not on the catwalk but in the Torch gallery in Amsterdam, included a mini-design studio, catwalk, advertising campaign, boutique and, most famously, a limited-edition perfume bottle notable for the fact that it couldn't be opened. More than a decade on, Launch has moved to London and is the opening exhibit at the Barbican. "We thought, if we can't create this world for real, then let's do it in miniature," they told The Independent, not long after it was first shown, "so that we can feel like kings in our own little world."

"The early part of the show represents a time when we were dealing with fashion but not necessarily making clothes," says Horsting today. "We were not so sure how to work inside the fashion system. We knew that we wanted to be fashion designers in some way, but not how to enter the system."

Fifteen years after they started out, Viktor & Rolf, although based once again in Amsterdam, are now very much part of the fashion system. In 2007, they followed in the footsteps of their one-time hero, Karl Lagerfeld, and designed a capsule collection for the high-street giant H&M, which famously included a wedding dress that retailed at £219.99 but sold on eBay for thousands almost immediately after it hit the stores. They have a Milan flagship store, just like any self-respecting big name, save that all the fixtures and fittings are upside down.

Horsting and Snoeren design twice-yearly womens- and menswear collections, and have two fragrances – Flowerbomb for her, Antidote for him – under their belts. When they signed a deal with L'Oréal in 2003 – they were the first designers to do so since Giorgio Armani in 1987 – they celebrated with Flowers, a spring/summer collection of ruffled floral-print tea dresses shown on models who dropped their haughty, untouchable demeanour for the duration, dancing under glitter balls in a Paris club with all the naive enthusiasm of teenagers at an end-of-term party.

From that time on, the Viktor & Rolf label has slowly but surely established itself as a global force to be reckoned with, and while the clothes have become more clearly commercial – perfect little black dresses, tuxedos and trench coats are now a time-honoured part of their repertoire – they remain heavily indebted to the French haute-couture tradition, both in style and fabrication. Neither have their creators lost the energy and heartfelt wish to entertain their audience above and beyond fashion's usual parameters.

Sometimes, Viktor & Rolf shows are dark – Black Hole was a particularly ambitious statement of intent designed to create something beautiful out of negativity; Fashion Show, in which models tottered on vertiginous wooden clogs surrounded by their own lighting rigs and sound systems, appeared as beautiful as it did cruel. For their autumn/winter 2008 womenswear collection, shown in Paris in February and due in stores next month, meanwhile, Viktor & Rolf said "no" – immaculately tailored coats and trouser suits all came with that word cut into their fabric, and models with glacé cherry-red lips and ivory complexions had twinkling black "nos" instead of eye make-up.

Back at the Barbican, Jane Alison describes the show, not unreasonably, as "a bravura installation": "They've found a really clever way of rethinking the retrospective, creating this surreal world of fashion make-believe. The doll's house is a hybrid – many ideas coming together – but essentially it is a play on a 'fashion house'. It is an emporium of dreams, it's aspirational, which clearly refers back to their Launch collection of 1996 – but now their dreams are even grander."

Meanwhile, Viktor Horsting, Rolf Snoeren and I have just stumbled across the "no" doll dressed in a particularly chic herringbone-tweed knee-length belted coat with a stuffed "no" cut into its torso.

Viktor: This is little "no".

Rolf: Big "no" is over there.

Viktor: Shall we go to big "no"?

Big "no", as Viktor describes her, is a formidable creature indeed. "What we really want to show is a very complex woman, a very complex human being. We prefer to avoid one-dimensional stereotypes," he continues. "Some shows go from something very romantic and frivolous to something more aggressive. For us it is very interesting when you have these ingredients that don't necessarily go together and you make a new mix."

And this mix, despite a deceptive surface gloss, is highly personal, which is, in the end, what makes it convincing. And with that in mind:

Rolf: This was a seasonal "no".

Viktor: It was a season when we both felt everything was going too fast.

Rolf: The pace is very demanding.

Viktor: So when we started working on the collection, we just kept think-ing "no".

Rolf: Not again. The word just kept coming up.

Viktor: And then we thought, we can deny it, or we can use it, just be honest and use it creatively. We thought there was something sexy about being strong, about saying "no".

And with that, the two highly original and wholly intriguing designers disappear to put the finishing touches to perhaps their most accomplished project to date.

The House of Viktor & Rolf runs from tomorrow until 21 September at Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2 (0845 120 7550; www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery)

It's show time: Viktor & Rolf's catwalk spectaculars

Atomic Bomb

Spring/Summer 1998

This was Viktor & Rolf's first haute-couture – and breakthrough – collection, comprising many of their classic looks – the tuxedo, the little black dress, and more – stuffed with multi-coloured balloons and other party paraphernalia to resemble nothing more obviously fashionable than a mushroom cloud. Each outfit was shown twice. On the second outing, "stuffing" had been removed to reveal beautiful draped pieces that were appealing in a more conventional way than might be expected, given the show's title and central concept.

Black Hole

Autumn/Winter 2001

Viktor & Rolf were feeling blue, they say, and the result of such negative emotion was a sublimely beautiful parade of all-black French classics inspired by Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, Cristobal Balenciaga et al, each with their own almighty twist. Models were painted black to match, from the roots of their hair to the tips of their toes. "I was on my knees like a car painter, doing everything, all the legs, inside the ears, inside the nose, everything was matt black," Stéphane Marais, the make-up artist responsible for the look, has since explained. "The only part that shone was the eyes. They looked like cats."

Flowerbomb

Spring/Summer 2005

As happy to celebrate the commercial as the conceptual, Viktor & Rolf chose to launch their first fragrance, Flowerbomb, with a collection, the first half of which was again cut out of black cloth, with models' heads covered with shiny black crash helmets. The second half was almost entirely pink, with scaled-up bows, flowers and frills embellishing ultra-feminine clothing. The contradiction between an aggressive, power-fuelled glamour and unbridled fairy-tale romance beloved by the designers is also implied by the name of the fragrance, which is determinedly flowery, but packaged in a glass bottle that looks like a hand grenade.

Russian Doll

Autumn/Winter 1999

Viktor & Rolf came on to the catwalk and carefully dressed a single model – Maggie Rizer – in all 10 outfits from this haute-couture collection, layered one on top of the other. The show opened with Rizer dressed in a loosely woven hessian shift over which she wore progressively more elaborate jewelled and embroidered pieces, which also grew in scale until she was positively dwarved by it all. The final outfit was a huge hessian evening cape embellished with a single rose, also crafted in this less-than-haute fabric.

Silver

Autumn/Winter 2006

This collection was inspired by the Dutch tradition of silver-plating baby shoes. "The idea is about treasuring things you love the most, and freezing these moments or experiences," Viktor & Rolf explain. "We decided to 'freeze' icons of fashion, so silver is on trenches, cocktail dresses and little black dresses, which is a contradiction because fashion is nowadays all so fast. For us, fashion is something we treasure, and by dipping garments and whole looks, we want to stop time, hold a moment for ever. It is a rigorous elegance, however, almost with Calvinist restraint."

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