Paris Haute Couture Week: Iris van Herpen
During Paris Haute Couture Week, Iris van Herpen presents her signature spellbinding Couture alongside her first aerial sculptures, ushering in a new era of visual artistry for the Maison. “For a long time I’ve been working on expanding people’s perception of how fashion and art can be symbiotic. This is the natural next step for me to really show what I mean,’ she says, likening her preferred process of moulage, or draping directly on the mannequin, to sculpting. “Even though we call one practice ‘Haute Couture’ and the other ‘art,’ to me, it’s one universe.”
In the midst of assembling 16 years’ worth of boundary-pushing Couture for her Musée des Arts Décoratifs retrospective, Sculpting the Senses, Iris van Herpen realised there was another creative ambition she had yet to fulfill. “I could see the interdisciplinary approach throughout my whole body of work, but I was missing something that had always been a part of me: my love of sculpture and painting,” says van Herpen, who although known for her classical dance background, grew up simultaneously entrenched in visual art. A year in the making, van Herpen’s sculptures not only celebrate her reconnection with nature, but also the immense freedom she has gained from slowing down. With Unfolding Time, curvaceous, hand-pleated silk forms recall van Herpen’s sensation of time being stretched when outdoors. Upon further research, she realised this was, in fact, a universal phenomenon: “It’s proven that within nature, people experience time in a different way.”
Image: Van Herpen working on “Embers of the Mind.” Her “canvas” is tulle, a shimmering surface to which she adds layers of oil paint, crusted into thick impasto, and designs made from both hand-pleated silk and 3-D printing. Courtesy of Melissa Schriek for The New York Times. Image above: Image: Iris van Herpen in her sculpture studio in Amsterdam, courtesy of Melissa Schriek.
The two largest sculptures — Weightlessness of the Unknown and Embers of the Mind —embody how for van Herpen, the creative process parallels the rhythms within nature. Calling the works “self-portraits of her inner world,” van Herpen materialises the beauty and chaos of ideation and experimentation through ambiguous depictions of renewal and destruction. “The works are about catharsis,” says van Herpen who experiences the handwork as meditative. “It’s in that stage of surrendering to the craftsmanship, in being free from time, where I can let go of a certain physical reality that is constraining me and a sense of transcendence is materialised.”
Fragments of painted silk hand-stitched to the tulle base, invisible from afar, comprise cyclonic compositions; up close, lava-like textures have been achieved through tens of layers of oil paint, evoking the heavy impasto of Japanese artist Kazuo Shiraga’s gestural paintings. The impossibly floating forms capture the spirit of Abstract Expressionists like Joan Mitchell and the eerie, otherworldly mood of Hieronymus Bosch, who, born in the same Netherlands region as van Herpen, has left an everlasting imprint on her imagination. The couturier additionally considers Louise Bourgeois an important influence due to her idiosyncratic approach to craftsmanship and the variety of her artistic output. The product of two parents who ran a tapestry restoration business, Bourgeois frequently infused textiles into her sculptures.
Image: Iris van Herpen’s Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2023/2024 show in Paris last July. “My work has always been interdisciplinary,” van Herpen said, “and I really feel such a strong connection between art, architecture, science and couture.” Image courtesy of Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images.
The final artwork, Ancient Ancestors, further conveys van Herpen’s homage to nature, but this time, the sea. The sculpture responds to recent studies conducted by French Biochemist Emmanuel Farge and his team at the Institut Curie, who discovered that the first marine organisms developed their sensorial capabilities by physically detecting the motion of the sea. “I find it quite beautiful that in the very origins of who we are, there is the essence of us feeling the waves,” says van Herpen. In this work, the artist has combined sinuously arranged silk with 3D-printed elements whose architectural structures conjure fossils, coral, stone erosions, and plants found in van Herpen’s garden. Like Unfolding Time, this work is accentuated by sprinklings of sand, both a metaphor for time and an homage to the sea.
Whether through gravity-defying silhouettes or ethereal draping that catches the air, van Herpen’s Couture-looks, too, seem to have a life of their own. While 3D-printing and the folding of silks are in the Maison’s DNA, new techniques are showcased. The Umwelt and Aeromorphosis gowns, for example, feature a subtle gradient of pearls echoing the sculptures’ cyclonic compositions, while the transparent Ataraxy gown, sculpted with a heat gun, emulates the artworks’ floating quality. Van Herpen honors Japanese craftsmanship, precision, and spirituality of daily life with the Sensorium dress, composed of obi fabric from the couturier’s kimono collection.
By presenting the Couture looks and sculptures concurrently as artworks, as opposed to the typical frenetic runway, van Herpen suggests that the audience choose their own paths and spend more time appreciating the artistry and craftsmanship. “These looks took many months to make, so the importance of slowing down is not only present in the work itself but also in how people perceive them,” she says. Van Herpen describes the overarching feeling that characterises this presentation and the Maison’s creative evolution as hybrid. Whether Couture, art, or architecture, her interdisciplinary approach remains the same, and with this hybrid collection, it has been fully embraced.
Find out more:
www.fhcm.paris/en/haute-couture-week
In the midst of assembling 16 years’ worth of boundary-pushing Couture for her Musée des Arts Décoratifs retrospective, Sculpting the Senses, Iris van Herpen realised there was another creative ambition she had yet to fulfill. “I could see the interdisciplinary approach throughout my whole body of work, but I was missing something that had always been a part of me: my love of sculpture and painting,” says van Herpen, who although known for her classical dance background, grew up simultaneously entrenched in visual art. A year in the making, van Herpen’s sculptures not only celebrate her reconnection with nature, but also the immense freedom she has gained from slowing down. With Unfolding Time, curvaceous, hand-pleated silk forms recall van Herpen’s sensation of time being stretched when outdoors. Upon further research, she realised this was, in fact, a universal phenomenon: “It’s proven that within nature, people experience time in a different way.”
The two largest sculptures — Weightlessness of the Unknown and Embers of the Mind —embody how for van Herpen, the creative process parallels the rhythms within nature. Calling the works “self-portraits of her inner world,” van Herpen materialises the beauty and chaos of ideation and experimentation through ambiguous depictions of renewal and destruction. “The works are about catharsis,” says van Herpen who experiences the handwork as meditative. “It’s in that stage of surrendering to the craftsmanship, in being free from time, where I can let go of a certain physical reality that is constraining me and a sense of transcendence is materialised.”
Fragments of painted silk hand-stitched to the tulle base, invisible from afar, comprise cyclonic compositions; up close, lava-like textures have been achieved through tens of layers of oil paint, evoking the heavy impasto of Japanese artist Kazuo Shiraga’s gestural paintings. The impossibly floating forms capture the spirit of Abstract Expressionists like Joan Mitchell and the eerie, otherworldly mood of Hieronymus Bosch, who, born in the same Netherlands region as van Herpen, has left an everlasting imprint on her imagination. The couturier additionally considers Louise Bourgeois an important influence due to her idiosyncratic approach to craftsmanship and the variety of her artistic output. The product of two parents who ran a tapestry restoration business, Bourgeois frequently infused textiles into her sculptures.
The final artwork, Ancient Ancestors, further conveys van Herpen’s homage to nature, but this time, the sea. The sculpture responds to recent studies conducted by French Biochemist Emmanuel Farge and his team at the Institut Curie, who discovered that the first marine organisms developed their sensorial capabilities by physically detecting the motion of the sea. “I find it quite beautiful that in the very origins of who we are, there is the essence of us feeling the waves,” says van Herpen. In this work, the artist has combined sinuously arranged silk with 3D-printed elements whose architectural structures conjure fossils, coral, stone erosions, and plants found in van Herpen’s garden. Like Unfolding Time, this work is accentuated by sprinklings of sand, both a metaphor for time and an homage to the sea.
Whether through gravity-defying silhouettes or ethereal draping that catches the air, van Herpen’s Couture-looks, too, seem to have a life of their own. While 3D-printing and the folding of silks are in the Maison’s DNA, new techniques are showcased. The Umwelt and Aeromorphosis gowns, for example, feature a subtle gradient of pearls echoing the sculptures’ cyclonic compositions, while the transparent Ataraxy gown, sculpted with a heat gun, emulates the artworks’ floating quality. Van Herpen honors Japanese craftsmanship, precision, and spirituality of daily life with the Sensorium dress, composed of obi fabric from the couturier’s kimono collection.
By presenting the Couture looks and sculptures concurrently as artworks, as opposed to the typical frenetic runway, van Herpen suggests that the audience choose their own paths and spend more time appreciating the artistry and craftsmanship. “These looks took many months to make, so the importance of slowing down is not only present in the work itself but also in how people perceive them,” she says. Van Herpen describes the overarching feeling that characterises this presentation and the Maison’s creative evolution as hybrid. Whether Couture, art, or architecture, her interdisciplinary approach remains the same, and with this hybrid collection, it has been fully embraced.
Find out more:
www.fhcm.paris/en/haute-couture-week