Iris Van HerpenFashion Designer - Collaborator

About: Taken from her website

Normal rules dont apply..

Iris van Herpen stands for a reciprocity between craftsmanship and innovation in technique and materials. She creates a modern view on Haute Couture that combines fine handwork techniques with digital technology .Van Herpen forces fashion to the extreme contradiction between beauty and regeneration. It is her unique way to reevaluate reality and so to express and underline individuality.

The essence of van Herpen is expressing the character and emotions of a woman and to extend the shape of the feminine body in detail. She mixes craftsmanship- using old and forgotten techniques- with innovation and materials inspired on the world to come.

For me fashion is an expression of art that is very close related to me and to my body.I see it as my expression of identity combined with desire, moods and cultural setting.

In all my work I try to make clear that fashion is an artistic expression, showing and wearing art, and not just a functional and devoid of content or commercial tool. With my work I intend to show that fashion can certainly have an added value to the world, that it can be timeless and that its consumption can be less important then its beginning. Wearing clothing creates an exciting and imperative form of self-expression. 'Form follows function' is not a slogan with which I concur. On the contrary, I find that forms complement and change the body and thus the emotion. Movement, so essential to and in the body, is just as important in my work. By bringing form, structure and materials together in a new manner, I try to suggest and realize optimal tension and movement.

Iris her designs require every time an unique treatment of material or even the creation of complete new materials. For this reason, Van Herpen prefers interdisciplinary researchand often collaborates with other artists or scientists.

Who is She? Born 5 June 1984

Dutch fashion designer

Studied fashion design at ArtEZ Insittue of the arts Arnhem

Interned at Alexander McQueen & Claudy Jongstra

Started her own label in 2007

Work and Style She creates 2 collections a year.

Work expresses interests in other art from with a general curisotiy of the world beyond fashion

Uses innovative experiments with techniques and technologies

When aspiring, she learned to work with soft fabrics yet felt limited. This lead her to experimenting with other materials and concepts to help push her work.

Each piece created could be seen as a sculturpe yet it is intended to be worn.

All work is revolving around body movement.

She was the first to introduce 3D printing into fashion before becoming fascinated and almost obsessed with the endless potential of 3D designs.

Work is often seen as futuristic.

CollaborationsIris van Herpen has collaborated with a number of artists from various disciplines, often on a recurring basis.

Artists/Architects: Philip Beesley, Benthem Crouwel Architects, Isaie Bloch, Irene Bussemaker, Carlos van Camp, Zach Gold, Bart Hess, Stephen Jones, Julia Koerner, Rem D. Koolhaas, Russell Maliphant, Neri Oxman, Heaven Tanudiredja, Noritaka Tatehana, Joost Vandebrug, Daniel Widrig, Jolan van der Wiel

Musicians: Beyonc, Salvador Breed, Bjrk, Grimes, Lady Gaga, Joey Yung

Photographers/Filmmakers: Pierre Debusschere, Zach Gold, Nick Knight, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Geoffrey Lillemon, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Todd Selby, Joost Vandebrug, Vincent van de Wijngaard

Choreographers: Nanine Linning, Benjamin Millepied

Special Projects: A Magazine, Daphne Guinness, Casey Legler, Tilda Swinton

Awards 2015 Marie-Claire Prix de la Mode, Best Dutch Conceptual Designer 2014 ANDAM Fashion Award 2013 Golden Eye Award 2013 Dutch Design Awards, category fashion 2013 Marie Claire prix de la Mode, best Dutch Designer 2010 Mercedes-Benz Dutch Fashion Awards 2010 Dutch Fashion Incubator Awards 2010 Dutch Accessory Awards 2010 Dutch Design Awards, RADO 2009 Dutch Design Awards, best product of fashion and accessory 2009 Dutch Media Awards

Hacking Infinity

Fall/Winter 2015-16Iris van Herpen explores ideas of terraforming modifying the biosphere of another planet to resemble that of Earth.

The collection explores the possibility of new geographies and our place within them. The desire to reconfigure space finds expression in light performative materials, which interact with the movement of the body, biomimetic structures and saturated spectral colors. The central geometry is the circle, in both silhouette and cut. The spherical shape of planetary bodies and the symbol of a boundless hackable infinity unfolds before us in a constant flow of mandala-like forms.Hand plisseed geometries both follow and frame the body while optical lighting film belts propose a polymorphic silhouette and challenge our perception of the figure in space.

This season Van Herpen has developed an extremely light, translucent stainless steel weave, hand burnished to imprint a sheen of nebula-like colors, whose infinite variations make each garment unique. Three-dimensionality is imperative to Van Herpen, and she continues her research with the creation of a 3D hand woven textile with designer Aleksandra Gaca. One weave like a mineral geology encases the body while the other cushions it with a light linear grid, threaded and fringed with a raw edge.

Van Herpen pursues her collaboration with the Canadian professor of architecture Philip Beesley on the creation of digitally fabricated dresses made from a black garden of fractal like geometries.

The shoes for the collection were made in collaboration with the Japanese shoe designer Noritaka Tatehana. They are crafted from 3D printed translucent crystal clusters and laser-cut leather.

Magnetic Motion

SS 15 ready-to-wear collection

For her SS 15 ready-to-wear collection, presented in Paris on Sep 30th, 2014, Iris van Herpen explores the interplay of magnetic forces. By thoroughly examining the representation of dynamic forces of attraction and repulsion, the designer fuses nature and technology.Earlier this year, van Herpen visited CERN the Large Hadron Collider, whose magnetic field exceeding that of earths by 20,000 times, provided inspiration for Magnetic Motion.I find beauty in the continual shaping of Chaos which clearly embodies the primordial power of natures performance, says Van Herpen describing the essence of the collection.Van Herpen stayed true to her spirit of bridging fashion and other disciplines by collaborating with the Canadian architect Philip Beesley, and the Dutch artist Jolan van der Wiel.Beesley is a pioneer in responsive living sculpture whose poetic works combine advanced computation, synthetic biology, and mechatronics engineering. Van der Wiel is an artist and craftsman whose work with magnetic tension has resulted in dynamic sculptures and installations that bring to mind the power of volcanic eruptions. Both artists strive to erase the boundaries between nature and technology in their work, which coincides with the direction of van Herpens creative aim.The designer worked with techniques like injection molding and laser cutting on maze like structures, 3-D printing and intricate architectural handwork on dresses, jackets, trousers, skirts and blouses giving them dynamic shapes and surfaces that echo the bodys movement. The three dimensional nature and the layering of the garments give them volume.Emphasizing light and shadow play, the minimalist color palette of black, white, midnight blue, and nude allows the designer to concentrate on the garments structure. Micro webs of lace veil and reveal the luminescent glow of crystal forms, while triacetate feathers punctuate the soft drapes and volumes. The controlled structure of the clothes is offset by the chaotic structure of the accessories, where, due to the nature of magnetic growth, no two items are alike. The shoes, belts, necklaces and clutches were grown using magnetic fields.

Wilderness Embodied

July 2013 - Paris Haute Couture Week

Nature is wild. Generated by powerful forces. Its proliferates by creating startling beauty.Trough her collaboration with artist Jolan van der Wiel, who has spent several years ponderingthe possibilities of magnetism, they have created dresses whose very forms are generated by the phenomenon of attraction and repulsion. Iris van Herpen draws equally upon the life force that pulses through the sculptures of DavidAltmejd. His wild organic forms derived from the regenerative processes of nature have inspired Wilderness Embodied.The human spiritis forged of this same vital energy, coursing and erupting through the limits of the body in suchresplendent displays of extreme tradition or technology as piercings, scarification or surgery.This wild(er)ness of the human body, as unchecked as it is intimate, is one that the designer hassought to reveal the collection.With architect Isaie Bloch and Materialise she continues to develop 3D-printed dresses, which she was the first to present in both static and flexible forms. Her partnership with United Nude's Rem D. Koolhaas and Stratasys has led to shoes like tangled webs of tree-roots around the foot.

Voltage

2013, Paris Haute Couture Week

For her fourth collection presented in Paris as a guest member of the Chambre syndicale de la Haute Couture, Iris van Herpen explores the electricity of the body. Experimenting with its use in the field of creation, this collection seeks to portray its tangible movement and power. This ability of light and electricity to change states and bodies is reproduced using the most innovative technologies. Described as an alchemist approach to fashion, Van Herpens designs perpetually embrace new collaborations with artists, architects and researchers.As part of the show she collaborated with new Zealand artist Carlos Van Camp, echoing his notion of controlling high voltage electricity and its interaction with the human body. Van Camp experiments with three million volts running through bodies.

Van Herpen shares Canadian architect Philip Beesleys fascination with materials and structures. They focus specifically on how the reaction of chemistry and electricity causes structures to respond to their environment and react as living beings.

Iris van Herpen is also know for being todays leading fashion designer in the use of 3d printing. Drawing on the idea of movement, the flexible 3D printed dresses are a revolution,a result of collaborations with Neri Oxman of the MIT Media Lab as well as Keren Oxman and Prof. Craig Carter of MIT with Stratasys, and architect Julia Koerner with Materialise.

Continuing for the seventh season, the catwalk shoes are the result of the collaboration between Iris Van Herpen and United Nude.

Hybrid Holism

July 2012, Paris Haute Couture Week

The project Hylozoic Ground by the Canadian architect and artist Philip Beesley provided the inspiration for this collection. Hylozoic refers to Hylozoism, the ancient belief that all matter is in some sense alive. Beesley created a responsive architectural system that uses hylozoism in a quite specific way, that is, we are working with subtle materials, electricity and chemistry, weaving together interactions that at first create an architecture that simulates life but increasingly these interactions are starting to act like life, like some of the ingredients of life. His environment breathes, shifts and moves in relationship to people walking through it, touching it, and sensing it.

Microprocessors invest that environment with a primitive or insect-like intelligence like a coral reef or a great swarm.Iris van Herpen is intrigued by these kinds of possibilities for a future of fashion that might take on quite unimaginable shapes. Fashion that might be partly alive and growing, and, therefore, existing partly independent from us, which in turn allows for a new treatment by humans: instead of discarding the fashion after use, we cherish, value, and maintain it in its abilities to change constantly. Van Herpens translated this future vision in a collection that is highly complex and incredibly diverse in terms of shape, structure, and material. For one design, the pythagoras tree' dress Van Herpen collaborates with architect Julia Koerner using a technique referred to as mammoth stereolithography which refers to a 3D printing method. This 3D printed process is built slice by slice from bottom to top, in a vessel of semi-transparent polymer that hardens when struck by a laser beam.

Micro

January 2012, Paris Haute Couture Week

Inspired by the pictures that science photographer Steve Gschmeissner took using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) technology, Micro zooms in on the world of microorganisms that is completely hidden from our sight.

The pictures show specimens that are dead, dried, and chemically fixated to preserve and stabilize their structures. Van Herpen remains interested in the living organism. Her designs allude to armature, tentacles, cell structures, and plasma. Some seem moist others glow and move while being worn, coming to live on the body.

Capriole

July 2011, Paris Haute Couture Week

Iris van Herpen made her debut in Paris as member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture with this collection. Besides being a compilation of highlights from previous collections, this new collection also presented five striking outfits that evoke the feeling just before and during a free-fall parachute jump. A leap in the air (the meaning of the French word Capriole) that Van Herpen once in a while takes to reset her body and mind.

The five outfits are a reflection of the extreme feelings experienced during that jump. For instance, the dress consisting of serpentine forms made of black acrylic sheets, nicknamed the snake dress, evokes the mental state at the moment before the jump when, as Van Herpen explains, all my energy is in my head and I feel as though my mind is snaking through thousands of bends.

Escapism Couture

January 2011, Paris Haute Couture Week

Escaping from everyday reality through addictive digital entertainment incites in Iris van Herpen not only feelings of emptiness but also associations with the grotesque, the extreme and the fantastic. This collection aims to capture both the exaltation of these addictions, like the disproportionate attention for celebrities (the new heroes) and its dark flipside, the never fulfilled hunger that is inherent to it.

Another important source of inspiration were the exuberant baroque sculptures of the American artist Kris Kuksi. Dramatic bulging spherical shapes alternate with lace- and skeleton-like 3D-prints, and silver-grey fabrics that seem to reflect their own surface.

Crystallization

July 2010, Amsterdam Fashion Week

At the instigation of ARCAM (Architecture Centre Amsterdam) a collaboration was organized between Iris van Herpen and Benthem Crouwel Architekten. Benthem Crouwels design for a new extension to Amsterdams Stedelijk Museum had earned the nickname bath tub.

This inspired Van Herpen to design a dress that would fall around the wearer like a splash of water, like being immersed in a warm bath, and to express in the collection the different states, structures and patterns of water. Noteworthy is that in this collection Van Herpen presents her first 3D-print that she created in collaboration with the London-based architect Daniel Widrig and that was printed by .MGX by Materialise.

Synesthesia

February 2010, London Fashion Week

Synaesthesia is a neurological condition that results in a combination of sensory perceptions. To underscore the hypersensitivity of the body, and to visualize this entanglement of sensory perceptions Van Herpen secured shiny metal foil on specially treated leather that generated a confusing visual effect without a steady fixation point.Synesthesia is an extreme sensitivity of the body, as a result of which all the senses merge. You can see colors when hearing music or experience taste.

People who have this 'abnormality' are actually living in a constant natural trip. In this collection Iris has approached the body as a manipulative, sensitive and fragile object by enlarging body parts through transparency, movement and extreme repetition so as to emphasize extremely refined craftsmanship. She confused the eyes and gives clothing an extra dimension by combining movement with liveliness. "I wonder if in the future clothing will support some of our senses or even take over."

Radiation Invasion

September 2009, London Fashion Week

Radiation Invasion translates Iris van Herpens question of what we could do with our daily (over)dose of electromagnetic waves and digital information streams if we could see them. In these designs the wearer seems to be surrounded by a whimsical complex of wavy rays, flickering patterns, vibrating particles, and reflecting pleats.The collection is about all the invisible rays (particularly electronics) with which we are constantly surrounded and immersed.

Something which is both scary and interesting. Iris thinks that in the future other ways will be found to detect radiation, where, apart from the body, a new dimension will develop. This collection is her representation of how it would look if we could detect radiation in the future and if we could control the radiation waves, if we, as a magnet, could attract and repel. 'Being beautiful" gets a whole new and more comprehensive form.

Mummification

January 2009, Amsterdam Fashion Week

Van Herpen became captivated with the macabre beauty of ancient Egyptian mummification and the intense devotion that surrounds the process. With techniques to swaddle, wrap and cover the body along with the typical geometric and graphic patterns of Egyptian mummies, she elaborates on the practice of the ancient Egyptians to create a new reality for their dead. She considers the 'reality' that they created for their dead as the reality, while they considered daily life an illusion.

She understood this as follows: take everything that seems obvious at face value, but create your own reality. Iris realized this chain of thoughts by combining their ancient techniques with modern materials and thus creating her own new reality. The wrapping and binding of the body and the emphasize of certain parts of the body such as the Egyptians did (as the head) are central in the collection. The collection is handmade from (ECCO) leather, which has been treated with different techniques and lace, tens of thousands of eyelets, ball chain, motorcycle chain and thousands of metal balls.

Refinery Smoke

July 2008, Amsterdam Fashion Week

The ambiguous character of refinery smoke, both beautiful and poisonous, inspired this collection. Van Herpen translated the elusiveness of industrial smoke into specially woven metal gauze. She turned metal threads into an extremely soft and pliable material. The metal kept its characteristic of oxidation and Van Herpen considers this inherent chemical process as (visually) reflecting the dual aspect of industrial smoke.

The organic, liquid, up-creeping smoke looks smooth and dynamic, yet at the same time is frightening, sinister and dangerous. Iris wants to give the viewer this mixed feeling about the collection by manipulating the unpleasant industrial material metal mesh into something soft and lively. The smoke seems to be alive, is tragic but also soft like something you would want to wear. "Will there be a time when clothing is unnecessary and that something as intangible as smoke could be 'worn' on the body?