Iris van Herpen. Portrait by Anastasia Muna.
In a time when it’s becoming increasingly hard to create something entirely new and non-referential, Dutch couturier Iris van Herpen carved out her own unique and complex identity, with designs that make the immaterial tangible. What do magnetism, electricity or smoke look like as garments? Iron, plexiglass and industrial materials all find their way into her creations, which are worn by clients including Beyoncé, Björk and Lady Gaga. In a recent live-streamed, four-day workshop with SHOWstudio, she used a hot air gun and acrylic glass to sculpt the “Water Dress” for Daphne Guinness, based on a shot captured by Nick Knight, from a session where buckets of black and white water were thrown at Guinness.
Sleek met van Herpen at Berlin’s Soho House, which hosted a dinner and conversation with the Dutch designer as part of their international “An evening with…” series. Van Herpen, who arrived in the German capital with a small entourage, was particularly excited about the city’s nightlife offerings. But before that, there was plenty to talk about…
Your work is often described as “futuristic” or “fantastical”, adjectives I’d like to challenge. After all, you’re working with technological advancements that are available now; your work is concerned with the present.
I don’t get the word “fantasy”. If I’m able to make it, or even think it, it’s there already. It’s that simple. I think anything you can imagine already exists in a way. But of course there’s a lot of imagination in my designs. And it’s all collected from the world around me. Everything is here and now. It’s important for people to realise that it’s not about the technology – technology for me is just a tool, the means and not the end. I guess people like to read about new technology, like 3D printing, which is celebrated as a revolution in the way we make things. So my work is seen as if it were all about that but it’s not. The biggest aspect of it is that it’s handmade, haute-couture. I don’t work with technology because I find it necessary but because it gives me options, helps me to get to where I want to go with my designs. I need it in that sense, but I also work on pieces where there are no technological elements involved – well, maybe in the materials but not in the making process.
You’re a serial collaborator: you’ve developed materials with MIT, designed costumes for ballet for Benjamin Millepied, worked with National Geographic on your “Biopiracy” collection, with architects, artists, the list is long… you’re now embarking on a new collaboration with the scientists at CERN. How do you decide what to explore?
I approach many different disciplines. I’m afraid to get stuck in my own head, in my own world. It’s pretty intense to work only on one thing, so when I collaborate it gives me a place to escape to for a little bit. I’m in contact with CERN and I’ve been there once so far. But it’s not like I’m not going to go there to work on my next show. This collaboration doesn’t have a time and place where it must go. I want the collaboration to be a natural process. I don’t want to have the end goal already in my head when I meet someone, that’s not the purpose of working together. CERN is very inspiring for me. I hope it will come out in my work in some way. We’ll just see where it goes. The scale of what they’re working on is enormous. I was very tired after my visit, but in a good, inspiring way.
You’ve shown at fashion weeks in Amsterdam, London, Berlin and now in Paris. Have you settled now?
I love Paris. It’s really the place for me, where I feel most connection with people and fashion journalists. I feel at home there in the sense that people really understand craft and they don’t think you’re crazy when you work on one dress for three months. It’s a place where I can dream. And of course haute couture is based there. The heart of my work is couture. It’s the core and the laboratory of everything I do.
Can you explain the relation between your couture and ready-to-wear collections? To me, the former seems more restrictive of the body, it dictates movement.
Some 3D-printed dresses where I first explored the technique were so delicate that you couldn’t sit. But I try to develop every technique into something I hope can be made for RTW. I like to work interactively. A lot of the materials come from the couture collection, and because we spend so much time with research and development, we get to know them and are able to work with them for RTW. If we were only doing RTW, we wouldn’t have been able to research and develop – it wouldn’t be profitable. The haute couture collection enables us to do RTW. It allows us to work with artists, architects, MIT, or CERN. It’s the perfect combination for me. I care less and less about the distinction. For me, it’s really about creation.
Iris van Herpen. Portrait by Anastasia Muna.
Yet I feel like restriction of the body, some type of “bondage aesthetic” maybe, exists in your work. You’ve recently done an issue of A Magazine Curated By. It’s like opening a window into your psyche, and I’d like to talk about the image on the cover.
The inside really showed the different areas where I get my inspiration from and all the people who influence my work. It’s a visualisation of my world, bringing it all together. The cover shows model Hane Gabby Odiele wearing a piece of mouth jewellery by a young St. Martins graduate. For me, A Magazine is about showing the process of how you get somewhere, and finding it’s not always easy. So the cover is on the one hand funny and joyful – Hane Gabby Odiele is smiling at you. On the other hand it’s kind of nasty, I wouldn’t want to wear this mouthpiece. It shows the friction, the difficulty of the process of being creative. Fashion in general mostly shows the end result, the garment is what you finally talk about but my processes are so complex that, though people ask about them, mostly I realise people don’t really understand them. The normal way of making fashion is very different. So it was important for me to have this space and go into the process of making, and it’s not always a nice and easy process.
Do you see yourself a bit as an artist or a fashion designer through and through?
Before I started fashion at the art academy, we did one semester of exploring all the disciplines. I realised that I need there to be a function. Fashion is about interacting with the body, and I need the restriction of the body, because it gives you limitations, which I need. I wouldn’t be able to make a sculpture, it’s too free for me. When I make a collection, I need a deadline. I also used to dance, but I don’t think I could be a professional dancer because I love materials and I like how once you put all that work into something, it’s there and can then go to someone else. The garment starts its own life with someone else. I like to work with matter, with my hands, and with something that once done, is out of my control. The process is completed by the wearer. I hate clothes on hangers. They’re like dead things.
Taken from Sleek 42 “Fun & Games”
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