Models were suspended in vacuums between plastic sheeting during Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen‘s Autumn Winter 2014 show at Paris Fashion Week.
Iris van Herpen and Belgian artist Lawrence Malstaf created the installation in which models were held in midair between sheets of plastic.
“Models float in the air, embryonic, seemingly weightless and in a meditative suspended animation,” said Van Herpen.
Tubes extracted most of the air from the sheets to suck them tightly around the models, who posed in foetal or crouched positions wearing shimmering dresses.
The plastic sheets were hung in a line along the centre of the catwalk used to present Van Herpen’s ready to wear collection, titled Biopiracy.
The collection included 3D-printed garments created in collaboration with Austrian architect Julia Koerner, who previously helped design a dress for Van Herpen’s Voltage collection presented last year.
Dutch shoe brand United Nude and fashion designer Iris van Herpen have collaborated to create crescent-shaped boots for her latest ready to wear collection shown at Paris Fashion Week.
For Van Herpen‘s Autumn Winter 2014 collection titled Biopiracy, the designer and United Nude worked together on two footwear designs.
The futuristic boots curve up and around the leg, encompassing the lower leg on both sides and looping behind the knee.
A long seam runs up the front of the upper before it opens at the top, while the back of the calf is left exposed.
Seven-inch-high heels cantilever from the back of the solid base, which continues the shape of the upper to the ground.
A peep-toe boot was also created in a similar style, but with a strap that wraps around the leg at ankle height instead of at the knee.
Black, cream and white leather was used for the designs, complimenting the colours of Van Herpen’s garments.
The Biopiracy collection was shown on Tuesday during Paris Fashion Week.
This is the ninth time United Nude and Van Herpen have worked together on footwear for her shows. “Working with Iris Van Herpen is each time a big challenge for us as she pushes boundaries with ideas for things that have never been done before,” said United Nude founder Rem D Koolhaas.
Dezeen interviewed Koolhaas last year, when he discussed United Nude’s “extreme theatre” shoe collaborations and talked about the future of 3D-printed footwear.
Here’s some information from Iris Van Herpen and United Nude:
United Nude make shoes with Iris Van Herpen for her Biopiracy collection
United Nude collaborates with Iris Van Herpen for shoes completing her collection for its 9th consecutive time. Nevertheless this is the first time that two instead of just one design graced the runway, in the form of the Biopiracy Boot and the Biopiracy peeptoe ankle Bootie, both on staggering 7 inch tall platform cantilevered heels.
The Biopiracy collection by Iris Van Herpen emerged from astonishment of companies’ patented human genes. As part of the show, Lawrence Malstaf created art installations, which developed the impression of models being weightless and breathless. In their half-sleep they seem bio-hacked, to slow down time and energy. Iris van Herpen and Lawrence Malstaf experiment with living objects, kinetic architecture and physical interaction through fashion in installation art.
A 3D printing collaboration with Julia Koerner and Materialise fuses the artisanal with the technical to create a kinetic dress which dances as it amplifies bodily movement. The Iris Van Herpen × United Nude Boot overrules the natural shape of the foot; this makes the graphically leather moulded boots futuristic sculptures extending the legs with a new silhouette into motion. Iris Van Herpen and United Nude is a match made in heaven from day one, as they are both not afraid of breaking boundaries by experimentation with design and technology.
Rem D Koolhaas: “Working with Iris Van Herpen is each time a big challenge for us as she pushes boundaries with ideas for things that have never been done before. Collaboration partners like Iris Van Herpen and Zaha Hadid give us way for our continuation in re-inventing shoes. United Nude was originally founded on this principle with our sculptural sandals just over ten years ago; breaking the rules of conventional ladies shoe-making, not for the sake if breaking them, but simply by not knowing them.”
Iris van Herpen‘s collection was shown during Paris Fashion Week in January and included two outfits made using additive manufacturing.
She collaborated with MIT researcher Neri Oxman and 3D printing company Stratasys to create a textured cape and skirt. An intricate dress made by selective laser sintering (main image) was designed with Austrian architect Julia Koerner and printed by Belgian company Materialise.
The Voltage collection also included outfits that looked like they were covered in white anemones and one piece built up from faceted mirrored triangles.
The jury commented: “With Voltage, Van Herpen gives the world a view into the future of fashion. It is impressive to see how she, at such a young age, succeeds in giving so much body to her work, without any loss of experiment and challenge. With her designs she shows better than anybody else what is going on in the Netherlands at the moment.”
Also at the awards, graphic designer Femke Herregraven took home the MINI Young Designer Award. The judges called her a “subtle and intelligent social activist who is not afraid of complexity and proceeds in a thorough and restrained manner”.
Iris van Herpen‘s Wilderness Embodied collection included dresses and jewellery that combine 3D-printing technology and natural forms.
“My Wilderness collection explores the wilderness that we as human have inside us as well as the wilderness in nature,” she told Dezeen.
Pieces that wrapped around the length of the neck and extended down the chest were decorated with pointy globules tinted purple, blue and pink colours.
These elements were repeated in symmetrical patterns on the see-through layers worn over neutral dresses.
The collars and spiky elements on the dresses were designed in collaboration with architect Isaie Bloch and 3D-printed with additive manufacturing company Materialise.
“Natural forces like magnetism that are essential to life inspired me to not only use manmade techniques like 3D printing, but to combine technology with the creativity and power of nature itself,” Van Herpen said.
Read on for more information sent to us by van Herpen:
Nature is wild. Generated by powerful forces. It proliferates by creating startling beauty.
For her fifth collection as an invited member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, Iris van Herpen focuses on the forces of nature, with a back and forth between innovation and craftsmanship. Beyond simple visual inspiration, this wonder of the natural world forms the basis of wild experimentation.
With the help of artists, scientists and architects, Iris van Herpen explores the intricacies of these forces trough the medium of fashion, and the sensitive poetics that have long characterised her aesthetic vocabulary.
Through her collaboration with artist Jolan van der Wiel, who has spent several years pondering the 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 David Altmejd. His wild organic forms derived from the regenerative processes of nature have greatly inspired Wilderness Embodied.
She proposes to reach this wild nature freedom into the human body and soul. The human spirit is forged of this same vital energy, coursing and erupting through the limits of the body in such resplendent 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 has sought to reveal the collection.Balancing respect for the traditions of atelier craftsmanship, with each garment subject to individual handwork, Iris van Herpen has nonetheless broadened the horizons of her domain: materials and processes.
With architect Isaie Bloch and Materialise she continues to develop the innovative 3D-printed dresses, which she was the first to present in both static and flexible forms. On the one hand, her long-term collaboration with Canadian architect Philip Beesley and, on the other had, her partnership with United Nude’s Rem D. Koolhaas and Stratasys which has led to a line of shoes, help to spread the spirit of the collection.
Dutch designers Iris van Herpen and Jólan van der Wiel collaborated to grow these dresses with magnets.
Product designer Jólan van der Wiel approached fashion designer Iris van Herpen with the idea to grow clothing using magnetic forces. To do this they manipulated a material made from iron filings mixed into resin.
“The technique still uses magnetism but with a new material that’s much more flexible and tactile, like a hairy skin that’s soft to touch,” van der Wiel told Dezeen. “The material moves with the body much better than what we’ve used previously.”
Before creating the dresses, van der Wiel experimented with the material to achieve the optimal flexible structure and dark pearlescent colour. Van Herpen then sketched out the shapes of the designs and made the cloth bases.
“The first dress we made was shaped like the moon,” said van Herpen. “With the second, I wanted the material to grow around the body more organically.” Each of the two garments took three weeks to construct.
The dresses were shown as part of Iris van Herpen’s Autumn Winter 2013 fashion show in Paris earlier this month, where outfits were accompanied by 3D-printed shoes that look like tree roots.
“The original idea was to have a dress growing live during the show through magnetism… so people could see the birth of the dress, how the dress would grow,” van Herpen said, though this proved too complex and potentially unsafe for the models.
Fashion designer and 3D printing pioneer Iris van Herpen tells us how printing and scanning technologies could transform the fashion industry in an exclusive interview for our print-on-demand publication Print Shift (+ transcript).
Advances in material and printing technology mean that flexible, washable clothes are now possible, says Dutch designer Van Herpen, whose latest ready-to-wear collection includes printed garments.
“I’m really happy that 3D prints finally act with the movement of the body,” she said. “[My] last show was really a big step forward because it was totally flexible and the jacket we created, for example, you could put in the washing machine.”
Dress from the Voltage collection, designed with Neri Oxman and printed by Stratasys
Van Herpen is one of the first fashion designers to investigate the potential of 3D printing to create clothes and accessories. Her 2010 Crystallisation collection featured dramatic printed items resembling body armour while her more recent Voltage collection features more delicate and wearable items.
“I always collaborate with architects or someone that specialises in 3D modelling because I don’t specialise in it myself,” she says. “I know a little bit, but not as much as the people I work with.”
She also ponders how 3D scanners could revolutionise the way we order our clothes in the future. “Everybody could have their own body scanned and just order clothes that fit perfectly.” See all our stories about Iris van Herpen.
Dress from the Voltage collection, designed with Julia Koerner and printed by Materialise
Print Shift, a one-off, print-on-demand magazine, was created by the Dezeen editorial team and produced with print-on-demand publisher Blurb. For more information about Print Shift and to see additional content, visit www.dezeen.com/printshift.
Here’s an edited version of the interview with van Herpen, conducted by Claire Barrett:
Claire Barrett: What was it about 3D printing that first interested you?
Iris van Herpen: With 3D printing, it was the first time I could translate the 3D image I had in my mind immediately to the 3D model in the computer and then the 3D printer.
With hand work or with the usual fashion designing I have something in my head that’s three dimensional, which first has to be translated into something two dimensional, like a drawing, then it goes to three dimensionality again, so it feels really, really old-school. It’s a strange way of working – you have a step in between.
The things I have 3D printed I could never do by hand. It would just be impossible. The beauty of handwork is that it’s always a bit different and you can never have something totally symmetrical. At the same time, I think that’s the beauty of 3D printing – it is one hundred percent symmetrical in the smallest details, even the printing layers. That’s the fingerprints of the technique.
Claire Barrett: Was the use of digital technology something that you were exposed to in college?
Iris van Herpen: No, it’s actually really funny. When I was young I was raised without television and we didn’t have a computer. I think we were the last people to have the internet and when I was at the academy I didn’t have a computer myself. I actually had computer lessons but I didn’t like the computer at all. I had discussions with my computer teacher and he said “you can’t work without a computer,” and then I was really stubborn and I thought “I can, watch me”. I did everything by hand all the time.
With 3D printing I suddenly saw how many possibilities it would give me in terms of three dimensionality, which convinced me to start working with technology.
Claire Barrett: Did your collaborations start from wanting to work in a more digital way?
Iris van Herpen: With 3D printing I always collaborate with architects or someone that specialises in 3D modelling because I don’t specialise in it myself. I know a little bit, but not as much as the people I work with. If you start from the beginning with something that someone else is already experienced in, I think that’s a waste of time.
Even if it wasn’t necessary, I would still do it because I don’t want to start to walk in circles, like being in my own mind all the time. For this collection, for example, we worked with Neri Oxman, Julia Koerner and Philip Beesley. It’s really bringing two worlds together because I think fashion is super interesting, but the architects who are bringing other things are just as important to me.
Claire Barrett: Why do you largely seem to be alone in pushing the use of 3D printing technology within fashion?
Iris van Herpen: I’m really open to sharing ideas and working with somebody, but I feel in fashion it’s quite a locked industry. Fashion designers are used to collaborating but usually with musicians they dress or an artist that makes a print for them. Working with scientists, architects or people that have different knowledge is just not a part of fashion and that’s something that surprises me.
Claire Barrett: Do you foresee a time when you might work with a material scientist to try and create something different?
Iris van Herpen: I always get inspired by materials, but I feel that I’m choosing them, not designing them. Of course it takes a long time so you can’t design materials for every season, but if you’re at least able to create something new every one or two years then I think you have more control over your design process.
Claire Barrett: Do you agree that your pieces are becoming less like sculpture or armour and more like garments?
Iris van Herpen: Yeah, I’m really happy that 3D prints finally act with the movement of the body. Now a girl can even dance in it. This last show was really a big step forward because it was totally flexible and the jacket we created, for example, you could put in the washing machine. You could sit on it. It’s really a garment now.
With [the Voltage collection] I really tried to make that step away from sculpture and find a field in between traditional weaving fabrics and 3D printing. With 3D printing you can decide how much flexibility you want in millimetres or centimetres on a specific part, for example the knees or the shoulders, and you can just include that on the file.
Also, something that’s really interesting is that they can include colours in the 3D prints. The colouring is in the file, it’s not something that they add later on. That’s a big step. If we continue with that you can create 2D prints within the 3D prints and then it feels like you’re creating something 4D.
Claire Barrett: How long do you think it will be before 3D-printed clothing becomes mainstream?
Iris van Herpen: I would love to be the first to include 3D printing in ready-to-wear. The flexibility is there, I think now the focus is on developing the materials, the long-term quality and size, because there are no printers that can print a whole dress yet.
But fashion is a super big industry. You have all the factories with the traditional sewing machines, so I can imagine maybe the industry will not be ready for such a big change because you need technical people with knowledge of 3D printing, 3D printers and software, instead of people that know how to sew a seam. I can imagine the technology is there but the industry is not ready for it or the change is too big.
Claire Barrett: Can you foresee a time when people will be able to download and print out an Iris van Herpen dress at home?
Iris van Herpen: Yeah, I can really imagine everybody has their own 3D skin and you can just order something online, but I don’t know if people will print it out at home. I can imagine you could have printing factories, order your dress and maybe the customer gets a little bit of a say in it as well. They could say “well, I want this one but with longer sleeves”.
Everybody could have their own body scanned and just order clothes that fit perfectly. I think it’s super old-fashioned that it’s only the 100 richest women in the world who have clothes that actually fit them and I think 3D printing can really fill up a gap there.
Haute couture garments by Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen will be displayed at an exhibition of her work in Calais, France, from June.
Skeleton dress by Iris van Herpen
Considered a pioneer of 3D printing in the fashion industry, Van Herpen utilises both new technologies and hand crafting techniques to create intricate sculptural designs.
The International Centre for Lace and Fashion of Calais consecrates a new exhibition to Iris van Herpen. At 29, this young Dutch fashion designer has largely impressed the fashion world with her futuristic sculptural costumes. Through the presentation of thirty pieces created between 2008 and 2012, the International Centre for Lace and Fashion invites the spectator to plunge into the avant-garde universe of this prodigious creator!
Mummification by Iris van Herpen
Iris van Herpen
Iris van Herpen is a young Dutch designer (born Wamel, 1984) who has made a considerable impact in the world of Haute-Couture in recent years. Following in the footsteps of Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan and Rei Kawakubo, her innovative, sculptural dresses represent a major contribution to the conceptual end of high fashion, deconstructing and examining the creative process and the relationship between clothes and the human form.
After training at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem (Netherlands) and a passage with Alexander McQueen, Iris van Herpen set out to develop and explore her unique combination of traditional craftsmanship and technological innovation. Invited by the prestigious Chambre Syndicale de la Haute-Couture to show her first Parisian collection in July 2011, Iris van Herpen creates clothes of subtle, poetic, unsettling beauty. Their sculptural forms, enriched by the play of light, place them somewhere between Haute-Couture and contemporary art. And yet the designer does seem intent on creating designs which can be worn by everyone, capturing and reflecting the wearer’s personality and aspirations: she launched her first ready-to-wear line in March 2013.
Radiation Invasion by Iris van Herpen
Exhibition Layout
The International Centre for Lace and Fashion of Calais highlights the recent collections of Iris van Herpen through the presentation of thirty dresses and numerous photographs. The exhibition gallery is a large, minimalist plateau some seven metres tall and sixty metres in length, a majestic backdrop against which to appreciate the creations of this celebrated Dutch fashion designer, unique pieces which blur the boundaries between art, design and fashion. The gallery’s light walls and polished concrete floor will be plunged into twilight, with lights carefully placed to ensure that all eyes are drawn to the dresses on display.
These creations are arranged by date and by collection, displayed on stands so that they can be seen from all angles. These original Iris van Herpen dresses are placed in confrontation and conversation with the photographs displayed immediately opposite them. Visitors can also see the dresses in motion, with footage of van Herpen’s catwalk shows projected on the big screen in the auditorium.
The radically original forms and materials used in Iris van Herpen’s works qualify them as “wearable sculptures”. The pieces displayed here demonstrate her ability to craft complex designs which draw on a wide variety of techniques, with interweaving elements, intricate lacing and fluting. Certain parts of the body, notably the shoulders and hips, are accentuated with voluminous extensions. Some materials make recurring appearances: leather in various forms and styles, acrylics subjected to various manipulations, metal chains and plastic straps. The colour palette is deliberately muted, offset with occasional metallic effects and flashes of iridescence.
Among members of the fashion world, Iris van Herpen is known for pushing the boundaries of Haute Couture. On January 23rd she showed for the second time as an official guest of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris, and once again wowed the audience.
Models stepped out in “Fang” shoes with ten sharp teeth to each foot – the product of van Herpen’s fifth successful collaboration with United Nude. The shape of the wedge is so complex that each one consists of fiberglass and carbon fiber, made in a slow molding process. It is not yet certain whether these shoes will come to market as a limited edition, as was the case with previous Iris van Herpen x United Nude designs, but it is worth keeping an eye out for them.
Iris van Herpen
Iris van Herpen’s designs demonstrate fashion as art. Her creations are clear artistic statements through which women can express their unique character. It is no surprise that Bjork and Lady Gaga are part of her devoted clientele. Her current collection has been inspired by microscopic organisms. The garments are made with her own signature materials, fused with highly detailed craftsmanship and innovative techniques, such as 3D printing. Her style’s avant-garde spirit combines raw and technologically-produced materials, displaying her attraction to radical fabrics, such as leather, synthetic boat rigging, Plexiglas and the whalebones from children’s umbrellas. Her exceptional blends create a sculptured effect and have an astonishing visual impact.
Spring Summer 2012
The main colors of the 2012 Spring-Summer collection are light, specifically white and beige, while also dabbling in the darker areas of the spectrum, such as ray-grey, brown, copper, dark metal silver and aubergine. Alongside United Nude, Iris van Herpen also collaborated on this collection with designer Stephen Jones, artist Bart Hess, architect Isaie Bloch and graphic designer Tara Doughans.
United Nude
United Nude in 2003 launched its Möbius shoe, which has ever since been recognized as a design- classic. Founders Rem D Koolhaas and Galahad Clark thus became the leaders in architectural heels, their current footwear collection extending over 50 highly conceptual models. The United Nude story actually began with a broken heart. Rem’s attempt to get back the girl was made by downsizing architecture to its smallest and most vulnerable scale level, that of a woman’s foot. While most romantic notions often prove foolish, what was hatched through romantic inspira- tion was the ‘Möbius’. The girl was gone, but Rem knew the shoe would become a reality.
Enter: Galahad. The seventh generation of the quintessentially English shoe-making dynasty Clark’s. When Galahad first saw the ‘Möbius’ he was immediately convinced that a new brand had to be formed. United Nude. Evolving in an open way with direct recognition, United Nude has positioned itself at the intersection of design and fashion. Clarity, elegance and innovation being its hallmarks, the brand sells in over 40 countries with flagship stores in Amsterdam, London, New York and Shanghai.
Called Escapism, the project is a development of an earlier collaboration between the designers (see our earlier story), to make more lightweight and flexible 3D printed dresses.
Escapism is a continuation of the collaboration between London based architect Daniel Widrig and dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen.
The project started with Crystallization, the first fashion collection ever featuring 3d printed dresses. Crystallization was launched at the Amsterdam Fashion Week in 2010.
Escapism attempted to further investigate possibilities and potentiality of advanced digital design techniques and computer aided manufacturing in the realm of haute couture fashion design.
Based on earlier experiences made with digitally manufactured dresses, Escapism pushes the limits of 3D printing in order to increase the wearability of the pieces.
The dresses are composed of clusters of fiber-like elements with minimized diameters. The fineness of the printed lines of the fabric makes the overall objects lightweight, flexible and allows for an economic production.
The geometric concept further allowed the designers to create larger objects without comprimising wearability and the model’s mobility on the catwalk.
The collection was produced in collaboration with New York based label .MGX by Materialise via selective laser sintering (SLS) in Polyamide. Escapism was first presented at the Paris Fashion Week earlier this year.
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