Maverick Dutch designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren have cultivated a reputation for showing whimsical clothes in highly theatrical runway settings. So when London's Barbican Art Gallery approached the duo for a retrospective, the quirky designers wanted to do something playful. The result: A three-story playhouse showcasing dolls dressed in miniature Viktor & Rolf designs.

"The House of Viktor & Rolf," which opened today and will run through Sept. 21, harks back to the brand's early beginnings in the late 1990s when the designers were just out of college and didn't have money to put on a runway show. Messrs. Horsting and Snoeren created a doll-sized exhibit, staging their looks in a tiny boutique, on a mini-catwalk and at a faux perfume launch.

Now that Viktor & Rolf has opened a flagship store in Milan, host high-profile runways and have a fragrance line, the dollhouse exhibit is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, says Jane Alison, senior curator at Barbican. "It's a temple to fashion but it's also like a shop window, an emporium of dreams," she says. "It's also a comment on the commercial nature of fashion and their place within it."

The exhibit features over 100 dolls -- 54 miniature ones in the dollhouse and 53 life-size ones, which are displayed throughout the gallery. The dolls were made by a traditional Belgian dollmaker and each is based on the model who originally wore the look on the runway. They have real human hair and professional makeup. Viktor & Rolf's atelier spent six months sewing the outfits for the two-feet-tall dolls.

Life-sized mannequins wear original runway designs by the duo, including last season's Fall 2008 "No" collection. But rather than show clothes on conventional mannequins, the designers commissioned oversized heads.

"When you go into the gallery rooms, it's bit like you're entering the dollhouse and you've shrunk," Ms. Alison says. "Playing with scale is very Viktor & Rolf."