How Iris van Herpen Transformed Fashion

Iris van Herpen (Dutch, born 1984) works at the nexus of fashion, design, technology, and science. With a dynamic and path-breaking body of work, she is widely heralded as a pioneering new voice in fashion. Van Herpen is known for her willingness to experiment—exploring new fabrics created by blending steel with silk or iron filings with resin, incorporating unexpected materials ranging from umbrella tines to magnets, and pushing the boundaries of technologies such as 3-D printing. Van Herpen has created a body of work that continues to defy expectation, evolving and forging new ideas and inspirations based both in nature and in visions of the contemporary world. The resulting works, defined within the fashion world as couture, are typically collected and shown in museums, viewed more often as fine art than as design-forward wearables.

Chemical Crows was inspired primarily by Iris van Herpen’s observations of a group of crows living around her studio. Her fascination with birds began at an early age, when she kept young jackdaws. Crows are known for their intelligence and predilection for glittering objects and are traditionally associated with secrecy and symbolism. Van Herpen is also intrigued by black magic and alchemy. She shares with alchemists a passion for controlling and transmuting materials, which is how she developed the urge to turn the crows into gold. As alchemists tried to turn base metals into gold, so van Herpen has transformed gold-colored umbrella ribs into whimsical fan-like shapes to represent the crows. She also used thousands of yards of industrial yarn to construct layered textures that give the impression of a suit of feathers in motion. With a passion and compulsion to gain control of her materials, van Herpen has transformed them into this amazing collection. Chemical Crows is van Herpen’s first major collection and was crafted entirely by hand. The three works illustrated here are in the collection of the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands.

Refinery Smoke is based on the astonishing beauty, the ambiguity, and above all, the elusiveness of industrial smoke. Seen from a distance, smoke provides a fascinating and dynamic spectacle: at times it seems to be alive, but it also harbors something sinister and can even be toxic. These properties, along with its soft, flowing texture, made Iris van Herpen wonder whether it might be possible to gain control of smoke to such an extent that it could be worn around the body. Van Herpen has manifested these ideas in a metal gauze that she had specially woven for the Refinery Smoke collection. The material, which is unusual in the fashion world, consists of innumerable fine metal threads. Van Herpen transformed this stiff material into wearable fabric that appears soft and light. The dresses started as silver gray but have oxidized over time to a reddish-brown, serendipitously reflecting the dual nature of industrial smoke. The three works illustrated here are in the collection of the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands.

Mummification reflects Iris van Herpen’s interest in the macabre beauty of ancient Egyptian mummification and the intense devotion surrounding the process. The idea of swaddling, wrapping, and covering is clearly visible in many of the collection’s pieces, along with the geometric and graphic patterns characteristic of Egyptian mummies. The way the Egyptians used these traditional practices to create form inspired her to design her own world with similar dedication. Van Herpen painstakingly handcrafted this collection from leather treated with different techniques, along with lace, tens of thousands of eyelets, ball chain, motorcycle chain, and thousands of metal balls. Van Herpen explains the deep connections between Egyptian beliefs and her Mummification collection: “The Egyptians tried to create reality by means of their art. They considered the reality that they created for their deaths as the reality, while their daily life was an illusion. In other words, don’t believe everything that looks obvious, but create your own reality.” The three works illustrated here are in the collection of the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands.