Expect to see a lot more frocks before the fragrance though. The first Viktor & Rolf scent won't be unveiled until early 2005.

Viktor & Rolf did the deal with Prestige et Collections International (PCI), the designer scent division of L'Oreal which already controls the beauty businesses of Giorgio Armani, Cacharel, Guy Laroche and Paloma Picasso.

"The contract with L'Oreal is a huge opportunity for us. The important thing is to seduce as many people as possible whilst maintaining our difference. Unlike many of our contemporaries, we defend a certain form of classicism," Viktor & Rolf said in a statement.

The agreement marks a radical break for PCI, which has not signed a new scent license in over a decade and a half and has not previously worked with cutting-edge talent.

L'Oreal has ambitious plans for the design team of Victor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, who have built a gilt-edged reputation in the past five years showing their contemporary couture collections in Paris.

"L'Oreal shares Viktor & Rolf's desire to create beauty products which surprise the public without alienating them, yet which can also move that public with the energy of the aura that surrounds them. These young designers embody a couture that is modern and spectacular, they are visionary. They inspire us to dream," said PCI president Patricia Turck Pacquelier.

Graduates of the Arnhem Academy in their native Holland, Viktor & Rolf first grabbed attention when they won the important Festival of Hyeres Young Designer Award. Since then they have presented 10 haute couture and five ready-to-wear collections.

Their most recent collection, a tour de force of staging using elements of theater and video imagery, was widely considered the most beautifully staged of the collections presented in March. Using blue scenes, the pair projected images of nature and the wild onto the models and clothes in an, at times, ecstatic show entitled "Long Live the Immaterial."

Ironically for such classically inspired couture designers, probably their best-known garment was a stars and stripes shirt that quickly became a collector's item.

Though L'Oreal did not release any target figures for the new scent, given the sheer economic power of the French beauty giant, Viktor & Rolf can expect major revenues from royalties - virtually guaranteeing the economic future of their fashion house.