Iris van Herpen | Inside a hybrid mind

Nestled close to the riverside in Amsterdam, Iris van Herpen’s atelier is a mirrored image of her work in mixing trend with artwork, science, know-how, and the pure world. We communicate over a Zoom name in September, just a few weeks after she wrapped up her couture present in Paris. The visionary Dutch couturier’s eyes choose the serene water physique in entrance of her; it’s these effervescent and transformative qualities of water that kind her method to design.

Typically fairly actually — because the ‘Water Gown’, created in collaboration with artist Daphne Guinness and photographer Nick Knight and presently held in The Museum at FIT, and at different occasions, because the backdrop for her fluid garments, as seen within the Carte Blanche assortment video that was shot underwater with French dancer and freediver Julie Gautier.

Carte Blanche

“If you have a look at all the pieces that exists, it’s all simply vitality,” says van Herpen, 40, her voice an assuring monotone. Maybe that is why her garments are not often simply clothes; they’re slightly, dynamic sculptures that seem virtually alive. Living proof: the clothes within the ‘Root of Rebirth’ assortment impressed by mycelium networks, the underground fungal techniques that join forests. It options intricate, root-like buildings that appear to be alive, embodying her imaginative and prescient of nature’s hidden connectivity. Or the ‘Magnetic Gown’ in collaboration with a Dutch artist, which makes use of resin blended with iron filings manipulated by magnets to create natural, virtually alien-like textures that develop from the material, resembling residing organisms.

Visceral expression of movement

To essentially perceive the essence of van Herpen’s 16-year-long profession, I attain out to veteran trend critic and an ardent fan of the designer, Suzy Menkes. In her electronic mail, she succinctly captures what units the designer aside in trend right this moment: “Iris invents all the pieces, significantly the material, if that’s what it might be referred to as,” she writes. “She makes use of supplies — or did proper originally of her profession — that had by no means been seen or used earlier than. Her designer talent has been to take the extraordinary and make it wearable and usable.”

Utilizing know-how, artwork and philosophy to rework materials right into a visceral expression of movement and life is omnipresent within the work she creates right this moment. As is her relationship with classical dance — being a ballet dancer, van Herpen has a deep connection to the physicality of the physique. In 2023-2024, she celebrated 15 years of her model with an exhibition at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

The exhibition titled Carte Blanche featured over 100 items from her oeuvre, organised into 9 themed rooms. Amongst them, the ‘Water Gown’, which simulates splashing water by using moulded sheets of acrylic, a way pioneered by van Herpen to evoke the phantasm of movement in a nonetheless kind, stands alongside collaborations with artists and scientists, reflecting her fascination with nature and transformation.

Water Gown
| Photograph Credit score:
Michel Zoeter

The retrospective took 5 years to curate, and for van Herpen, it was additionally a strategy to monitor her personal change and progress through the years. “It was like my very own diary, of who I used to be at every second,” she explains. “So, selecting items wasn’t about logic — it was pure instinct.”

As one meandered via the exhibition, one other aspect of van Herpen’s work grew to become obvious — that her use of supplies is “primal”. From the tensile power of plant stems, the fragile intricacy of spiderwebs, and the unbelievable world of mushrooms, her creative expression spans the gamut of nature. Vogue, in some ways, is her manner of visualising the interconnectedness of the pure world and human life. To that finish, she has created couture with recycled plastic, digitally printed clothes, and harnessed kinetic vitality in calf-length clothes.

Futuristic and cutting-edge, however pure

Sustainability, too, takes the steering wheel within the design course of. In line with van Herpen, the way forward for sustainable couture lies in balancing innovation with pure supplies and creating biodegradable options that retain an expensive, futuristic really feel. “Even 10 years in the past, my work felt futuristic, nevertheless it relied on artificial supplies,” she explains. Her first-ever outing as a designer was a costume made out of 150 hangers. The ‘Hanger Gown’, because it got here to be identified, demonstrated her meticulous method to reworking on a regular basis objects into high-fashion. “Now, I need futuristic design to imply pure, with an natural presence.”

To make her imaginative and prescient come true, she is collaborating with universities and analysis establishments, along with the already current laboratories she works with. “They’re usually cutting-edge, generally even two steps forward of corporations,” she says, citing 4D printing as her subsequent large step. The know-how will take the dynamism of 3D printing additional, the place designs will have the ability to change form over time, responding to the atmosphere or wearer’s actions. “The items will carry out a form of micro-dance across the physique,” she says. Think about a costume that might change together with your physique, and accommodate all of life’s altering cycles, from giving start to rising outdated.

“What units Iris aside is her artistic course of and the way in which she thinks about trend and its place in our up to date world,” says Melissa Marra-Alvarez, curator of training and analysis at The Museum at FIT, additionally dwelling to the ‘Water Gown’. “Past creating distinctive or stunning clothes, she understands the interdisciplinary nature of trend.” And to mirror the excessive degree of professional choreography required to create collections utilizing methods equivalent to laser-cutting and customized 3D-printed materials, a synchronised dance of specialists, together with scientists and designers, come collectively on the atelier.

Shows of the collections, too, experiment and innovate. From museums to galleries, and runway reveals, no area is out of context for van Herpen’s couture creations. For her Paris Haute Couture Week present, she eschewed the runway completely — selecting as a substitute to point out in an artwork gallery. Fashions got here connected to canvases, balancing on a platform, their hair set into the canvas like an impasto portrait. For about an hour and a half, audiences walked round and took in the fantastic thing about the second and her collections up shut. It was a uncommon incidence the place individuals had been invited to step into her world. Future installations will possible comply with this format, she says. “I wish to open individuals’s eyes and create a profound expertise.”

The subsequent leg of Carte Blanche will open at Kunsthal Rotterdam in September.

The author is an impartial journalist primarily based in London, writing on trend, luxurious and way of life.