Iris van Herpen – Wikipedia

Dutch fashion designer

Iris van Herpen

van Herpen during the Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2012

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Iris van Herpen (born June 5, 1984) is a Dutch fashion designer known for fusing technology with traditional haute couture[1] craftsmanship.[2] Van Herpen opened her own label Iris van Herpen in 2007. In 2011, the Dutch designer became a guest-member of the Parisian Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, part of the Fdration franaise de la couture.[3] Since then, Van Herpen has continuously exhibited her new collections at Paris Fashion Week.[4] Van Herpen's work has been included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Iris van Herpen graduated from the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem in 2006[5] and interned at Alexander McQueen in London,[6] and Claudy Jongstra[7] in Amsterdam before launching her own label in 2007.[8] The Dutch designer debuted her first Couture collection 'Chemical Crows, at the 2007 Amsterdam Fashion Week.[9]

Van Herpen pioneered the use of 3D printing techniques applied to the world of fashion[10] and shown her first 3D-printed garment at the 2010 Amsterdam Fashion Week. The Crystallization top was inspired from the phase transition water undergoes when it crystallizes. The garment was 3D printed from white polyamide.[11]

Van Herpen's work can be described as interdisciplinary as she draws inspiration from professions outside of fashion and the arts. Therefore, the designer creates much of her work in collaboration with professionals working in fields of science, technology and architecture.[12] For example, her SS 2020 collection, Sensory Seas', drew inspiration from both marine ecology and the work of Spanish neuroanatomist Ramn y Cajal.[13] In 2010, Iris van Herpenundertook her first collaboration outside of fashion, when she collaborated with the Dutch architectural firm, Benthem Crouwel Architekten to create her Water Dress.[11]

Critics describe Iris van Herpen's work as both organic and innovative.[14] With New York Times journalist Vanessa Friedman stating: "It's not that she rejects the heritage of the couture, she just redefines it with modern tools. Once upon a time the sewing machine did the same.[15]

Van Herpen was one of the first designers to adopt 3D-printing as a garment construction technique.[7] Her design process utilises technologies such as rapid prototyping as one of the guiding principles in her work. Van Herpen is known for using radical materials such as dragon skin,[15] synthetic boat rigging or the whalebones of children's umbrellas.[14]

Since 2009, pop star Lady Gaga has worn Iris van Herpen's designs on several occasions. In 2012, Gaga wore a custom shiny black Couture dress for the launch of her perfume Fame. The shape of the perfume bottle served as the inspiration of the dress, which Van Herpen constructed from laser-cut strips of black acrylic.[2] Van Herpen has also made use of silicones, iron filings, and resin.[16]

Iris Van Herpen her designs can be described as a posthuman style. Posthuman style is derived from Posthumanism. Anneke Smelik explains how in the context of fashion, the posthuman is a figure of interconnection and mutual imbrication that transforms human subjectivity by making alliances with all kinds of non-humans. By merging art, fashion and technology, Iris van Herpen produces a posthuman style of in-between- ness, moving away from any kind of dualist binaries.With Posthumanism, humans are not the centre anymore, we are intertwined and at the same level with technology, non-binary things and non-human objects.[17] The earlier mentioned water dress is a great example of posthuman style. Posthumanism overcomes dualism and is more intertwined and interconnections between for example the biological and technological etc. The mentioned water dress is a great example of several interconnections. It is a creation between craftsmanship and technology, as it is made by 3D printing . Yet also between the organic, the water and inorganic, the polyamide. Another one is between fluidity and solidity, the water splash and the hard polyamide material. Most of her designs take inspiration from natural phenomenons which she combines with technologies like 3d printing. Like dreams, sound waves, wasps of smoke or magnetic fields. With these designs it not only becomes an in betweenness, the body becomes blurred; posthuman.

Because of van Herpen's multidisciplinary approach to creation, she has collaborated with various artists such as Jolan van der Wiel[18] and Neri Oxman[19] and architects such as Philip Beesley[20] and Benthem and Crouwel Architects.[21] The designer's interest in science and technology has led to ongoing conversations with CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research)[22] and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[23]

Further collaborations;

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Iris van Herpen - Wikipedia