Iris Van Herpen

Designer Research: Iris Van Herpen

Iris van Herpen is a Dutch fashion designer who is widely recognized as one of fashion’s most forward-thinking creators who continuously pushes the boundaries of fashion design. Since her first show in 2007 Van Herpen has been inventing new forms and methods of sartorial expression by combining the most traditional and the most radical materials and garment construction methods into her unique aesthetic vision. She calls this design ethos “New Couture.” Van Herpen is a guest member of the prestigious and exclusive Parisian Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, Paris’ Haute Couture association. Because of van Herpen’s multidisciplinary approach to creation, she has collaborated with various artists such as Jolan van der Wiel and Neri Oxman and architects such as Philip Beesley and Benthem and Crouwel Architects. The designer’s interest in science and technology has led to ongoing conversations with CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Van Herpen is probably the worlds most well known fashion designer when it comes to 3D printed designs. Van Herpen is often hailed as a pioneer in utilizing 3D printing as a garment construction technique, and as an innovator who is comfortable with using technology as one of the guiding principles in her work because of its sculptural nature and unfamiliar form. The designer’s intent is to blend the past and the future into a distinct version of the present by fusing technology and traditional Couture craftsmanship. Today, van Herpen continues to work within her Amsterdam studio, where new ideas are born, and where Haute Couture orders are meticulously crafted for her global clientele, each creation passing through the designer’s own hands. Van Herpen uses 3D printing techniques to create many different design aesthetics for her fashion. It is clear when looking at the wide range of designs that she is able to create through these digital fabrication processes why she is known as one of the leading pioneers in the field of 3D printed fashion. Her creativity and imaginative ideas spread across a wide range of final design outcomes, creating a variety of out of this world design aesthetics. Through 3D printing she is able to create garments that could not be created in any other non-digital way. The garments which were created to represent the splashing of water are a great example. The 3D printed process creates such a realistic approach to this idea, which could not have been created manually by hand. Through 3D printing, Van Herpen is able to create these other worldly designs reminiscent more of sculpture and art than of wearable fashion. As digital technologies such as 3D printing continue to excel and get better, you can only imagine what is next for this incredible artist and designer. What is also spectacular about the work of Van Herpen is that in a world of fast fashion, 3D digital printed fashion is so sustainable, zero waste you could even say. Yes there would be the issue of printing samples and things going wrong where one would need to reprint, but in a world where we have so much wastage around the cut offs from fabrics which end up in land fills, 3D printing could well be a future option that could help to drastically reduce the waste produced in the fashion industry.

“If I were to use one word to describe my work, it would be movement as one of the most influential things in my life has been my classical ballet practice. Through dance I learned about the seduction of movement, the transformation of the body and the ‘evolution’ of shape. Those years taught me how to shift shape and were the birth of my interest in fashion. I Don’t think of fashion as being clothes, or a discipline. I think of it being much more. I see fashion as a dialogue between our inside and our outside. For me fashion is a form of art that is close related to me and my body. I see it as a very personal expression of identity combined with desire, mood and culture. Looking around me, I consider what I can’t see as much as what I can see, and that transformative focus creates freedom in my work. Each garment and every collection is an embodiment to new understanding and discovery, on conceptual level, on the level of materiality and on the level of femininity. Its my search to new forms of femininity through organic silhouettes, delicate craftsmanship, innovation and the collaboration with other artists, architects and scientists. There’s beauty in contrast, new terrains are found at the intersection between precision and chaos, art and science, the human touch and the high-tech, the artificial and the organic.”

– Iris van Herpen

The Water Dress – Crystallisation Spring Summer 2011 collection:

“The water-dress symbolises for me the incomprehensible magic of the body,” says van Herpen. “I often wonder if we will keep on wearing fabrics in future, or if dressing will become something non-material, something that is visible, but not tangible or touchable.” This statement by Van Herpen is a really interesting thing to think about, especially when it comes to the idea of digital fabrication and processing techniques used for fashion design. As 3D printing excels in the future and becomes a more prominent force in the fashion industry, one day we must of course excel even further from that. As we say goodbye to the fabrics we once used and move onto digital printing, will we then one day move on and say goodbye to the idea of 3D printing, moving onto something even more extreme and futuristic. Perhaps the idea of clothing made from holograms? It sounds like a crazy far fetched idea, but then again, not so long ago, 3D printed clothing would have seemed like an impossible idea. As Van Herpen stated, something that is “non-material, something that is visible but not tangible or touchable”. Clothing made from Holograms would be extremely eco-conscious. There would be absolutely zero waste when it comes to the material aspect, of course the hologram would have to be projected from something and so this would need to be created using some sort of tangible material but aside from that aspect, holographic clothing would be extremely eco-friendly for the environment. The water dress is extremely interesting and also brings forward other ideas aside from the holographic concept. One of the reasons we wear clothing is the warmth that it provides our bodies, unlike animals which are born with fur or thicker skins. If one was able to create garments from an actual source consisting of water, water of course a ‘material’ which can constantly change its temperature. This could create a great material to be used for covering and dressing ourselves. We would be able to cool ourselves in the heat and heat ourselves in the cold. Water would be an incredible material to use to shelter our bodies in if we were able to conduct and confine it to our bodies. If you could imagine a world with less of a gravitational pull, where we could control the force of gravity to create clothing from real tangible water like in the image below. This sounds like a crazy far fetched idea but with the right scientific digital resources and environments, who knows, perhaps it could be possible that we could create garments using water.

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