Freedom fighter

Iris Van Herpen is one of the leading avant-garde designers in the Netherlands. She recently showed her work in several museums and is still a must-see during Paris Fashion Week. I was lucky to talk to this Dutch-born fashion designer, a graduate from the ArtEZ Fashion Academy in Arnhem, several times, and this is the story I wrote for StyleZeitgeistMagazine in New York a few years ago.  

Backstage at the Galerie Marquardt in Paris, the girls have just put on their regular clothes again. They are just normal girls now. Gone is the magic. Gone is the dream. For the atmosphere that Iris Van Herpen brings about with her designs is just that: a kind of fairytale world in which women look untouchable. Standing out from the crowd – that’s a fact.
There’s a line-up of cameramen and journalists, all of them eager to talk to the designer who – twice in a row- has been invited to couture week in Paris by Didier Grumbach, the boss of the Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture, who organizes all fashion weeks. Grumbach is a big fan of Iris’s work. And it’s not difficult to see why: in a world dominated by marketeered products and money-driven fast fashion, this is really something completely different.

Copyright Marleen Daniels

Why does she show her fashion during couture week? What’s her inspiration? Where does she come from? The questions from bloggers and journalists keep coming. And Iris answers them one after the other. Still keeping her calm. One of her assistants comes to the rescue but she willingly continues with one more journalist. “I’m very happy to be part of this”, she says to me. “I feel that I’m part of a new kind of haute couture. My designs fall into two categories. On the one hand handmade pieces that are produced in much the same way as haute couture used to be made. On the other hand my 3D pieces, which I design on a computer but then send off to a company that prints the designs in 3D. It’s a very complicated process which takes days on end. People think: oh, just push the button, but that’s not how it works. Sometimes I sit an entire day next to the printer and see the piece coming out of it, millimetre by millimetre. So maybe you could say that I use couture techniques, but mostly modern ones.”

Copyright Marleen Daniels

Iris Van Herpen (1984°) graduated from the ArtEZ fashion department in Arnhem in 2006. While studying, she completed an internship at Alexander McQueen’s studio in London and at Claudia Jongstra in Amsterdam. After graduation, she started working on her own designs, and was invited to show her collection during Amsterdam Fashion week in 2007. She almost immediately won design prizes in Holland, but it didn’t take long before her talent was discovered in London, New York, Paris and Berlin, four cities where she showed so far. 
Each collection is built around an emotion or question, rather than a specific theme. “I need a strong concept that keeps me interested during the whole process of making a collection”,  Iris says. The 2009 summer collection was all about ‘Radiation Invasion’, and the invisible radiation waves around us. “I questioned myself whether we will be able to see this radiation in the future. What will this do to our bodies? Will beauty change?” A year later, the collection “Crystallization” was all about how water turns into crystals, a way of witnessing the process from liquid chaos to a vast structure. “I’m fascinated by the secrets and invisibilities of water”, Iris says. “Structure and chaos as two opposite poles, and how you can come from chaos to absolute precision.” Her current collection is called ‘Escapism Couture’ and is all about fleeing. This world. This body. 

Copyright Marleen Daniels

It’s clear that Iris sees fashion as an expression of and a big question mark to the world. She’s very interested in history, future, human beings, and aesthetic. “Fashion to me is not just a functional or a commercial thing, it’s a world we create, it’s a form of research on who we are or who we want to be.” 

“Beauty is a function as well”

To put her ideas into actual designs, Iris works with all kinds of materials, especially new ones. She’s a big fan of metal thread, but also uses aluminium, leather and human hairs which she and her small design team (only a couple of assistants) put together by hand. It’s the hard work, day after day, that does the job, she often says. She’s very open towards collaborations, and in the recent past has worked together with milliner Stephen Jones and architect Daniel Widrig (for the 3D printing). She even processed shoes with Rem D Koolhaas (not the famous architect though) and his United Nude project, designs that are well received by top multi brandstores such as L’Eclaireur in Paris, Browns in London, Sien in Antwerp (and the United Nude flagshipstore in New York), just to name a few.  

Her designs may often be called unwearable, but the likes of Lady Gaga, Björk, the Kardashians and Skin (leadsinger from Skunk Anansie) have worn her clothes on and off stage. Some people call her work futuristic. Iris agrees to a point: “I like unanswered questions in my concepts, which you can find in the future. Futurism gives space to my imagination and my doubts. Yet, it’s my personal world I’m creating.” 
As a whole, Iris is not interested in fashion the way most designers see it. “I’m not even sure whether you can call my creations fashion”, she says. “The thing is I don’t want to make normal clothes. I need this freedom. Unfortunately making my designs costs money, so once in a while I need to make a rather normal collection. Right now, there’s no need for it.” And that’s because Iris’ most special designs have earned museum status and are frequently bought by museum directors and by special fans who consider themselves a modern Maecenas. Right now, her work is on show in two different musea in Holland, and next year the Groninger Museum (which did big solo exhibitions on Alaia, Viktor & Rolf and Bernhard Willhelm in the past) will dedicate its entire surface to her work.

In the meantime, Iris still lives in Arnhem, where she loves the quiet life, far away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. “Here I can really concentrate on what I’m doing”, she says. “I think big cities distract. They get you off balance. The only problem is that I sometimes hardly find good materials here…(laughs)” 
All the attention – in Holland but even more elsewhere- is not getting Iris off balance at all. By now, she’s probably back to Arnhem working like crazy on yet another collection. Who will invite her? Where will we see her again? Who knows. Maybe on the moon, her dream location for a fashion show. I bet she’s already reading books about weightlessness.