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.
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.”
Want to read more of this article?
We are proud to be a subscriber-funded publication with members in 185 countries. We know our readership is passionate about textiles, so we invite you to help us preserve and promote the stories, memories, and histories that fabric holds. Your support allows us to publish our magazine, and also ‘what's on’ information, and subscription interviews, reviews, and long-read articles in our online blog.
ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONTENT
