In three decades of memorable outings, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren have made a point of leavening serious couture with contradiction, paradox, improv, and humor. Next month, more than 100 of their creations will be the subject of an exhibition at the Kunsthalle München in Munich, entitled “Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Statements.” Before today’s show, Coco Rocha gamely posed in a frothy confection from the fall 2016 collection. The duo described the presentation, titled Viktor&Rolf Scissorhands, as “couture but with a punk attitude.”

“You know the feeling when you want one thing, but you also want the opposite? You’re torn between the two?” Snoeren asked, somewhat rhetorically, backstage before the show. “On the one hand it’s about wanting something elegant and polished, and on the other it’s raw, immediate, and direct.”

On the racks, dresses in black tulle and nude satin corsetry sat waiting for their models, some with bodices half-slashed, tulle skirts cratered, midriffs peeled away. Though one skirt appeared randomly hulled out, Horsting explained that every layer was hand-sewn to the next, with each one taking two days, and so forth and so on for 300 hours until the skirt could be gouged out “like comic strip cutting.”

On the runway, the show unfolded as seven capsules, each led by a finished couture look trailed by three experimental iterations in escalating states of dismemberment. On the one hand, it offered a meta commentary about fashion’s eternal cycle of endings and new beginnings. On the other, the clothes looked just plain terrific.